Heart Bound: Shinigami
by Umei no Mai
Summary: Falling in love can have far-reaching consequences when you're a kami, especially when you happen to be under an inconvenient curse. Falling in love with a shinigami captain had the potential to be disastrous. Slight Rurouni Kenshin crossover.
1. Date Indeterminate

**Date indeterminate; outside the established temporal flow of the impure worlds**

Befriending a shinigami whilst investigating the minor spiritual pocket dimension called 'Soul Society' by its denizens was understandable, expected even; falling in love with said psychopomp was not. Especially when you knew only too well that love, true, sincere, lasting love forged the kind of bonds that made it almost impossible to step outside the flow of time and space. She would be limited to the mere handful of local dimensions for as long as this particular beloved lived, which considering he was a purely spiritual being and a knew soul could be centuries. Millennia, even.

Not to mention that she would have to hide herself away to avoid attracting attention: shinigami were powerful enough in their own way but not on the same scale as she was. As a kami whose powers flowed freely from the life-force of the pure worlds and whose domain was energy in all its forms, her abilities covered some of the same ground as theirs but went far beyond what they even believed possible. Their purpose was to regulate and protect souls as they passed into a designated afterlife; she on the other hand was an agent of Creation itself. There were always power-hungry individuals out there and as she did not want to be looking over her shoulder for the entirety of this lifetime, a disguise would be in her best interests. A shinigami disguise, so she could use some of her powers openly and not attract unwelcome attention.

But to become a shinigami she would need a zampakutō, which she could not attract. She was not a human soul and had no need of a weapon spirit to stand at her side; lacked even the places in her being that would enable one to latch on to her. True, she had the necessary inner forms to _become_ a zanpakutō, but that would not do her any good at all. She wanted to stand beside her beloved and he already had a blade.

Though, thinking about it...

She could attach herself to a human soul, provided said soul allowed her to do so, and reversing the sword-to-soul relationship that all shinigami had would not be difficult so long as the soul cooperated. Finding a suitable and compatible soul with the right mindset to be comfortable being a blade, that would be the tricky part. At least her love was still new enough that she could yet wander outside the time stream in her search. Most souls wanted to pass on and would not be comfortable or willing to delay their own afterlife to offer aid to a kami trapped by chains of her own making, however involuntary those chains might be.

The other hard part would be choosing a name. Names mattered and her true name was unpronounceable to non-kami. She needed to pick something that harmonised with her true nature and fitted in with her new environment; not as easy to determine as it seemed. Fortunately being outside of time –if only just– meant she wouldn't have to hurry, having quite literally all the time in the world. A shortage of places to choose from perhaps, but that actually made things easier by cutting down on the available options.

Which inevitably drew her mind back to her beloved, her shinigami who was also a captain in the military organisation being put together to protect the souls of the dead from the lost and hungry. Her heart hoped he would live for a long, long time: it hurt when she lost an anchor even though she could follow them into their next life if she wished. She rarely did so; the ties biding her to them always shattered in death and they inevitably forgot her.

However the wild, untamed part of herself that danced amongst dying stars and wandered freely amongst the impure worlds scattered throughout the firmament like tiny bubbles in a rushing river could not help chafing at the imposed limits that came with loving a being bound by time. It did not make her adore her shinigami any less, but she knew only too well what she was giving up to stay at his side.

At least this one knew –however vaguely– that she wasn't just another human soul but a being different enough to be outside of most people's understanding. She'd met him in what amounted to avatar form and had never hidden her true nature from him. He knew she wasn't human in the slightest. Once upon a time she had been, yes, but no longer. She had lived too long, seen too much and learnt too much for that to be true anymore.

Nonetheless, she had managed to fall in love _again_ and hopefully this relationship would be among the more fulfilling ones where she got as much out of it as she poured in. That he knew her for what she was amounted to a good start. A long existence of everyday human living would be pleasant and restful even if she had to masquerade as a psychopomp while doing so. It was so exhilarating to love and be loved again; ironic that what bound her was all she had ever wanted out of life.

* * *

><p>It did not take all that long to find a suitable wandering soul with a basic compatibility to her. The soul in question could not recall her own name yet remained an elegant and fierce onna-bugeisha with a strong sense of honour and duty. She agreed to aid the soon-to-be-incarnate kami on the strength of that duty: the formless being was moulding herself to become a proper wife to the man she was bound to, which was what a samurai lady's honour required her to do.<p>

The second soul however was the source of a serious overturning of the status quo. For one this soul had in life been a peasant-born hitokiri in the Bakumatsu, which instantly antagonised the Samurai lady already bound. For another he had a borderline dissociative identity disorder dividing his soul into highly polarised opposites, making him almost two people in his own right. The kicker however was that he was so unbelievably compatible with her on a spiritual level that they melded on the very moment of contact, making it impossible to leave him behind.

Unlike the former soul this one knew himself very well indeed, the lighter half claiming he was a rurōni called Kenshin while the darker half introduced himself as the hitokiri Battōsai. The incongruously petit redhead's distinct lack of inner peace was ironically what had caused him to be bound so tightly to her soul; being a kami forced into mortal form through ties to a human soul was the kind of thing that inspired profound internal conflict no matter how many times it had happened to her.

Said inner conflict was unlikely to resolve itself any time soon, considering how constantly the two souls bickered in her mindscape. Well, Battōsai and the well-dressed lady bickered. Kenshin was the peacekeeper and had what seemed to be infinite resources of patience.

Her zanpakutō problem theoretically resolved, the kami paid one final visit to her shinigami beloved to inform him of her intention to incarnate and the high likelihood of a few changes in her appearance connected to being limited in that way. She also told him the name she would be using: Nishi Amagurai, Heaven's Twilight of the West.

Preparations complete, she shifted her entire being into the empty dimension between the local human dimension and Soul Society and let the natural forces at work sweep her into mortal form.

* * *

><p>So, this is what happens when you start thinking about how to insert a powerful, self-insert-ish character into a story yet have the plot still mostly work, then get bitten by the plot bunny you were poking. Plus, I was reading <strong>Vathara<strong>'s many and wonderful Bleach and Rurouni Kenshin AUs and this sort-of eventuated.

It is long, slightly messy and was written over about ten days after desperately trying to ignore it for most of a month. Hopefully putting it up online will either get it to stop bugging me or persuade my muse to explain how the Winter War is supposed to go...

EDIT 20-12-11: I've fixed the spelling up now and fiddled some of the grammer. Still not sure how to write the war though...


	2. 1843

**13th year of the Tenpō era (1843 AD)**

Nishi Amagurai's first instant of 'afterlife' involved the tearing sensation of decompression unpleasantly similar to what the human body would experience in the vacuum of space. The pain tore through her and exploded in every single nerve.

_Hear me! Call my name! I am-_

"Sentence all under heaven, Tenin'yoshō!" The words were gasped through a swollen throat as blood dribbled from her eyes and ears but the effect was immediate, stopping the pain and reversing the damage. Amagurai staggered off the street into a nice shady alleyway, wheezing heavily and clutching the red-wrapped hilt of the newly materialised daitō just slightly longer than a normal katana that was her first zanpakutō's shikai form.

"Tenin'yoshō? Heavenly Scales of Shadow and Light?" she muttered curiously as she stepped carefully around a rubbish pile.

_Tenyoshō, actually; you called for sentence without the weighing of a target's guilt. I am the bright violence and merciless judgement to my gentler half's cunning, pragmatism and forgiveness. Once I was Battōsai, but that name binds me no longer. You called on me and me alone to aid you and aid you I will, but I will _not_ permit you to draw upon my other half until you have truly understood what I have to teach._

Amagurai swallowed hard, a shaking hand pushing long strands of hair out of her eyes. This was by far the most dangerous help she could possibly have called upon, though she knew he could be relied upon absolutely to keep her safe.

"Here we go then," she muttered, threading the blade through her obi and setting off. She had warned Jūshirō not to expect her until the beginning of the 2nd year of the Kōka era, six months after she had seen him last, but her innate sense of time indicated that was over three years away from when she was now. That overlap wouldn't affect her personally –she was sufficiently limited in power now that she couldn't find herself easily– provided she stayed outside the Court of Pure Souls and its sekki-seki walls. However, she needed somewhere she could train unobtrusively and for that she needed to be as far away from the city as possible.

The best places for her to hide herself in were the 78th, 79th and 80th districts of each quarter, the outermost slums where death and crime were as commonplace as dirt and air. Shinigami, even those of 9th Division who acted as the security force, never wandered that far out unless hunting Hollows.

Judging by the way the people in the streets seemed to be looking past her, it seemed that Tenyoshō was concealing her very presence from passersby. Deciding to take advantage of her invisibility, Amagurai slipped down another ally and scrambled up the wall of a two-storey building. The dim evening light made her difficult to see even without her blade's veiling effect on her spiritual power.

Carefully picking her way across the tiles, Amagurai settled down on a flat section of roof and looked out across Rukongai towards the largest collection of reiryoku she could sense: Seireitei. Judging the distance from it to her current position, she then looked around towards the farthest edge of the city in the opposite direction.

Going by the position of the sun and her distance from the central fortress-city, Amagurai determined she had landed in Rukon's eastern quarter somewhere between the 40th and 50th districts. Not a fantastic part of town, but still nice enough for people to notice a woman travelling alone and wonder. Sighing she shook her head, fingers massaging her temples. Japanese society was so terribly conservative.

She paused, noticing for the first time the fine strands hanging in front of her face. _Since when do I have red hair?_ Pulling on a loose lock, she craned her neck over her shoulder. _Make that nearly waist-length vermillion hair. How did that happen?_

Felling slightly spooked that the soul who had become her default zanpakutō had made such an impression on her being, the incarnated kami examined herself properly for the first time.

Off-white hakama, a dark blue haori over a similarly off-white kosode, sandals, dark blue tabi the same shade of indigo as the haori and a plain red obi: men's clothing that hid her figure and gender from casual watchers. Her hair was slightly wavy and vibrantly red like arterial blood with strands of crimson and coppery orange here and there to give it depth. Using her blade as a mirror she discovered her eyes were now darkly shadowed grey with gold flecks.

All in all it was a very major change from luminously white hair that caught the light and scattered rainbows like faceted crystal and eyes like pale opals filled with glimpses of every colour imaginable. Thankfully her bone structure was exactly the same as it had been in her avatar form so Jūshirō should be able to recognise her face. Pondering this unexpected development Amagurai dropped off the roof and set off east, obediently following her zanpakutō's promptings on how to pass from one shadow to the next and remain unseen. Three years until she could see her beloved again; she'd have to make the time count.

* * *

><p>And things get moving. I've noticed that zanpaktō tend to look rather like their bearers, so have co-opted that so Amagurai come to resemble one Himura Kenshin, since he's who she ended up bonded to. The other lady will show up later.<p>

Tenin'yoshō means "heavens' shadow and light balance" and its proper activation phrase is "Judge and sentence all under heaven". Amagurai didn't say it properly and ended up with only half of the spirit manifesting in the blade. Unfortunately for her, it is Battōsai who does the sentencing.


	3. 1846

**2nd year of the Kōka era (1846 AD)**

Amagurai leapt silently from rooftop to rooftop, reiatsu suppressed into invisibility and sandals barely whispering on the ceramic tiles underfoot. It was not quite three years since she'd landed in Rukongai and much had changed since then.

For one, she was now capable enough with a sword that Tenyoshō encouraged her to actually fight rather than limiting herself to training, sneaking and ambush tactics. Considering that she lived in Rukongai's eastern 79th district, Koyabashi, not too far from Hinode, the 80th and easternmost district, that said a lot for her skill. Especially factoring in that her zanpakutō insisted that she leave no living witnesses when she fought.

Hinode ran red with blood every single night as rival gangs clashed over the district's scant resources of water and sake. Koyabashi on the other hand was largely empty, a no-man's land filled with the occasional looming warehouse and derelict farm, patrolled by thugs from 78th –Akatsuki– protecting caches of riches and provisions hidden amongst the ruins.

Amagurai had claimed an abandoned warehouse for herself and settled in its inaccessible attic. When a few weeks later she discovered that she could mold reishi, spiritual matter, she had filled up all of the ground floor windows and doors with conjured stone and opened up smaller windows right under the roof. The open and largely secure space created within she used for training.

In her past three years of life at the raggedy edge of Rukongai she had also collected a number of strays. Children who landed in Hinode did not survive for long and those in Koyabashi rarely lived much longer. Amagurai had rescued two dozen small children and another ten who had not yet finished puberty. Older than that and the gangs tended to recruit them as soon as they arrived.

* * *

><p>Amagurai had hunted down a decent orphan's home in Takabe, the 24th east district. Takabe was a moderately stable district as both it and the neighbouring Hiraida district were where a fifth of Soul Society's rice was grown. Takabe had a massive wall separating it from the higher numbered districts and barely any trees at all: instead flooded rice fields stretched as far as the eye could see. Only the occasional farm building broke the endless ripples of wind-blown rice plants.<p>

The only proper settlement in the entire district was a mile directly west of the wall's lone gate and was the nexus of the area's rice trade, supplying everyone who actually needed to eat as well as those who just wanted to in most of eastern Rukon. Amagurai took all the younger orphans to a house she owned in Takabe Village, where the couple who lived in the building ensured they were all looked after. Those children without reiryoku were found jobs or apprenticeships, be it as labourers, farmers, weavers, carters or cooks in the lower districts or as gardeners, tailors, potters and scribes in the higher districts. One devastatingly lovely little waif had even been accepted into a 5th district tea house to train as a geisha.

Those children who had enough spiritual energy to feel hunger Amagurai dealt with differently. They still had to toil in Takabe's fields in the harvest season with the other orphans, picking rice day in and day out for two months, but after that those who were interested were escorted back to Koyabashi with the heavy sacks of rice they received as payment for their labour. Amagurai then kept the food in storage to feed the hungry horde and whatever strays she found in the coming year. These children who actually needed food and wanted to learn Amagurai trained in street fighting, wall climbing and roof running. She also taught them how to hide or flare their reiatsu, how to infuse their body with spiritual energy in order to move faster and showed them a handful of useful tricks with energy alone such as making light and opening locks.

Since rice was not enough to survive upon she taught them to climb trees in order to find fruit and how to hunt, both of which got her little mob into trouble as the best fruit trees were always claimed by someone or other and Soul Society had few wild animals other than fish. Whenever somebody brought a chicken back to the dojo Amagurai knew better than to ask where it had come from.

* * *

><p>Her brood was not limited to children however: every now and then a soul landed in Rukongai who had visible yōkai blood. They rarely survived long; the outer districts regularly suffered Hollow incursions and anything that appeared less than purely human was generally killed by frightened mobs in short order. Amagurai had rescued a bat yōkai she had found cowering in a rubbish heap and a grey inugami that had been scavenging in a ruined house. The dog could have passed as a normal creature except for its massive size and unusual eloquence; the kumori on the other hand had dark skin and leathery wings instead of arms. He slept the days away under the rafters of Amagurai's fortified dojo and spent the nights flying around outside.<p>

The dog yōkai on the contrary was content to wander around the outside of the dojo and slept in the sunlight in front of one of the narrow passages that the children used to get in and out.

As of the new year, Amagurai had in her care nine spiritually aware children, five pre-pubescent and four approaching adulthood. Today was an important day because she would be escorting the older ones to Seireitei so they could join the Shinō Academy.

* * *

><p>She touched down on her own roof, clicked open the locked window shutter with a carefully controlled pulse of reiatsu and let herself in, closing the window behind her. After seeing her charges off at the Academy she would be heading further in to the 13th Division to find Jūshirō. She'd really missed him since incarnating and had been tempted to find him three months ago, but there had been a major gang war in full swing and it wouldn't have been safe for her to leave the younger children behind.<p>

Sighing, Amagurai opened the trap door leading down into the dojo and let herself drop quietly down to ground level, observing her charges from the shadows as they practiced together.

The two youngest ones were doing kata under Hiro's watchful eye. Hiro was the strongest of the older children and the best at hand to hand. He was also the best at enhancing his hits with reiatsu and could stun an ox with a single punch.

Tomoe was the oldest girl and the best at subtly manipulating her reiryoku. She could pick locks, dance across nightingale floors without making a sound and set all kinds of traps. Being short and slender her physical skills were poor but she countered that weakness by fighting very dirty indeed. She was currently throwing volleys of rag balls at Moya, forcing him to dodge and jump.

Moya was the oldest and tallest of the boys and had green hair. He was quick on his feet and had a good head for strategy, unlike Hiro who preferred to attack problems head-on until they collapsed. He was also the only one of the boys who could dance, something he had retained from his previous life and aided his considerable agility.

Kari was the youngest of the older set as well as the most technically gifted. He had been intrigued by how Hollow's could make themselves invisible and had created a rudimentary technique that let him mimic it. He was the best at calligraphy out of all the children and was at that moment overseeing a reading lesson with the other three younger ones.

Seeing that everyone was gainfully employed, Amagurai entered the kitchen and unloaded from her small pack the cuts of fresh meat and preserved fish she'd stolen from a gang-run storehouse in Akatsuki. The fish was to feed the littles while she was away, the meat for tonight and the journey tomorrow. Seireitei was a long, long way from Koyabashi, nearly ten days on foot. Well, barely even five days on foot for her, but that still meant she'd be leaving the younger ones for over two weeks. Time in which they would have to lie low and fend for themselves, only leaving the dojo if it was absolutely unavoidable.

Sadly it couldn't be helped, Amagurai reminded herself as she chopped the meat into small chunks and put more fuel on the fire. She would be stopping by Takabe on her way back to see in any of the spiritually aware babies she had left in the Shirosuna couple's care had grown old enough to be interested in learning to manipulate reiryoku. If they were interested she'd show them a few tricks and tell them about shinigami.

* * *

><p>Eleven days later Amagurai was perched in a tree in the grounds surrounding the 13th Division of the Gotei 13, watching the sun go down. It had taken longer than she'd hoped it would to reach the Court of Pure Souls due to other spiritually aware children joining them as they travelled from district to district. There had been an additional seven children in the party by the time she'd left them on the steps of the Shinō Academy.<p>

As the sun finally dropped beneath the horizon Amagurai left her tree and flitted silent as smoke towards the 13th Division captain's private quarters and let herself into the outer hall. Though Jūshirō had last seen her less than six months ago it had been over three years since she'd last been here and she'd really, really missed him.

After checking for one final time that Tenin'yoshō was hidden from others' notice by a subtle illusion Amagurai carefully reached out with her usually hidden kami aura to brush gently against her beloved's spirit energy.

Barely a few moments later he slid open the door to his study, lamplight gleaming on white hair and captain's haori.

"Amagurai, beloved," he breathed, reaching out to gently caress the side of her face. You look so different. Very much more alive than I was expecting."

"It's the hair," Amagurai said, leaning into his touch. "I've missed you, Jūshirō. So very much."

"I've missed you too. Won't you come in?" he asked, stepping back into the study and glancing over at the door leading to his private quarters. Amagurai responded to the invitation, stepping over the threshold and following him further into the building. Tomorrow she would have to hurry back to Koyabashi and the children but tonight was hers to enjoy and savour.

* * *

><p>Reiryoku is spiritual energy, while reiatsu is the physical pressure exerted by said energy.<p>

Kumori means bat, just as inu means dog and inugami means 'dog spirit'.

I named 79th East Rukon District 'Koyabashi' after the infamous no-win scenario, but 78th District Akatsuki has nothing to do with Naruto. Takabe I made up: it means 'rice wall'. Hinode means sunrise.

As you will by now have guessed, Amagurai has fallen in love with Ukitake Jūshirō. Be aware that **if you haven't read Bleach or watched the anime that there will be very serious spoilers in this fic!**


	4. 1858

**5****th**** year of the Ansei era (1858 AD)**

Amagurai sat cross-legged on the roof of her dojo, gazing out across her territory. She was feeling slightly stunned: half an hour ago Tenyoshō had informed her she was now skilled enough that he was prepared to entrust her education to his other half, the gentler yin spirit of her zanpakutō. Teninshō was different to his other half as when called forth with the phrase "Judge all under Heaven" his shikai changed so it had no sharp edge at all, making it a katana-shaped piece of blunt metal. It was still dangerous in competent hands: she would now be learning how to break bones, stun and otherwise incapacitate after over a decade of bloody slaughter. Koyabashi and the nearer reaches of Akatsuki were far less dangerous to ordinary souls now as criminals preferred to stay inside closed doors after dark instead of roaming the streets. People whispered of the Shuhitokiri, the vermillion manslayer who stalked the night and slew evildoers.

Amagurai did not like killing at all; it didn't fit with the fundamental tenet by which her zanpakutō expected her to abide, that her blade was to be raised in the defence of all people. The people she was killing weren't being protected. Tenyoshō had just told her that people who chose to do evil to others had forfeited their right to protection and could be killed to ensure the survival of everyone else. He also told her that yes, in the long run murder was unproductive, which was one of the lessons he'd wanted her to learn. _Bloodshed solves nothing,_ he'd whispered in her mind, _Anyone who seeks to change the world through killing those who oppose him is doomed to fail._

This had eventually led Amagurai to where she now was, sitting on her roof listening to a very different voice in her mind. A quiet, self-deprecating, polite and somewhat rustic voice that talked about peace, understanding and forgiveness.

* * *

><p>Amagurai had seen nearly forty teenagers go from the streets around her home to the Shinō Academy since settling in Koyabashi and her fortified dojo now protected a territory that included a tannery, a tailor and two bars, one of which had a brothel upstairs. Her dojo also hosted two permanent teachers in addition to herself and finally had a proper front door. One of said teachers was a genuine jujutsu master and the other was a lady who taught tantōjutsu: knife fighting. Despite her zanpakutō casually informing her that she was now so skilled in battōjutsu that she could rightly bear the title of Battōsai, Amagurai did not offer lessons in satsujin-ken to her students. Instead she taught them how to run over roofs, climb up walls and cross unstable ground and also how to find and use their reiryoku. It made her heart swell with delight to see a gawky pupil in mismatched clothing and bare feet scramble over broken tiles without knocking even one of them loose.<p>

Lately she'd had occasional visitors from Seireitei, shinigami she'd plucked off the streets as children and granted a home to before taking them to join the Academy. They visited in ones and twos, Stopping by to see her and mess around with the children in the dojo. The bat yōkai had left years ago and opened an apothecary; the canny kumori had learnt to weave illusions and hid his inhuman appearance behind a glamour. The inu-yōkai still dozed outside, now just to one side of the main door, and many would-be thieves had discovered to their chagrin that his lazy exterior hid a canny mind and very sharp teeth.

Having more reliable adults around to watch over the children meant Amagurai could visit Jūshirō more often, which she took advantage of as often as possible. He frequently suffered from relapses of the strange illness that festered in his lungs and she had eventually managed to develop a way to ease his pain: an odd little trick with spirit energy that enabled her to breathe for him so he did not have to struggle to stay alive moment by moment as he coughed up blood.

Most of the dojo and neighbours knew she had someone she was close to but none of them had any idea who it was; the local women had a habit of gossiping about it and speculating from time to time.

It amused Amagurai that most people thought she was male. True, she did wear men's' clothing almost exclusively and they hid her somewhat modest figure very well, but her face was all curves and very few men had the inclination to grow their hair down to hid-thigh in a hime cut. It wasn't like she used male speech patterns either. Her fondness for cherry pink haori was also a clue, as were the embroidered obi she wore. But the fact remained that everyone who didn't actually live in the dojo and know her personally was convinced that 'Nishi-sensei' was male. The children thought it was hilarious and went out of their way to encourage the confusion.

* * *

><p>Satsujin-ken translates as 'murdering sword', indicating a sword style designed for battle and death rather than self-defense. Battōjutsu is the art of rapidly drawing the blade from its sheath and attacking in the same movement; the title 'battōsai' is made up but suggests a person who is a master of this technique.<p> 


	5. 1865

**2nd year of the Gengi era (1865 AD) **

Amagurai stood in the crowd at the front of the Shinō Academy with a dozen teens and young adults from her dojo and another ten they'd collected on their way through east Rukongai to Seireitei. Today she would not be returning to her dojo: She'd turned the building over to a young woman who'd been a student there for the past five years but didn't want to be a shinigami. Amagurai had taught Yukihime everything the girl could learn then made the younger woman her heir: Yuki-chan, while kind and generous, was positively lethal with a naginata, and would lead the Nishi dojo for years to come. Her dojo's future secured, the bound kami had decided it was time for her to become a shinigami.

Part of the reason for deciding to move on was that she'd finally mastered Tenin'yoshō's shikai in its entirety, meaning she could safely set that part of herself aside and reach out to her other zanpakutō spirit, who she was yet to hear even a whisper from. She intended to keep Tenin'yoshō's existence secret from everyone, letting them believe that the spirit she had yet to establish contact with was the only one that resided within her. Shinigami were very much like samurai, she had noticed, with 2nd Division's Omnitsukidō being the only exception.

Tenin-yoshō was the weapon of a hitokiri and would only serve her so long as only wielded her while doing what was necessary to protect innocents. The Gotei 13 however was a military institution where those under its command were expected to obey orders. Her other zanpakutō was born from the soul of a samurai lady, one accustomed to duty and obedience, and would suit the situation better.

Smiling eagerly with the rest of the crowd while one hand gently double-checked that Tenin'yoshō's ever-present blade was properly concealed under a layered illusion, Amagurai joined the slow-moving mass headed for the exam rooms. The exams would determine where she would be placed in the classes and after she had finished them she would slip across the city to visit Jūshirō. She'd told him she intended to join the Academy this year, after twenty three years of procrastination and life on the very edge of society, but she still couldn't wait to see his face when he finally saw her in uniform!

* * *

><p>Short and sweet. Omnitsukidō are the stealth forces, which were eventually merged with 2nd Division.<p>

Reviews are love!


	6. 1868

**3****rd**** year of the Keiō era (1968 AD) **

Amagurai knocked politely on the door of Ugendō, the modest yet attractive house attached to 13th Division, her shikahushō still slightly uncomfortable in its newness. The door was opened by the division's third seat, a harried-looking older man:

"Yes?"

"Nishi Amagurai, 4th Division," Amagurai said, her medical backpack hanging loosely from her right hand. "Unohana-taichō sent me to monitor the well-being of Ukitake-taichō." She did not mention that this was technically her first day as a shinigami.

The third seat looked desperately relieved. "Wonderful! Captain, Unohana-taichō sent over someone from 4th Division," he called over his shoulder back into the house. "I'll go and make sure fukutaichō is doing the paperwork!"

Amagurai slipped into the building as the third seat hurried past her and closed the door properly, removing her sandals before venturing further inside.

The captain of the 13th Division of the Imperial Court Guards was lying on his futon in nightwear, gasping for breath in between choking on blood. Amagurai was at his side in an instant, calling up the wordless kidō that enabled her to breathe for him. He recognised her at once, eyes widening in surprise, but was unable to speak as another mouthful of blood was coughed up.

"Ama-chan?" he eventually managed to wheeze. "I thought you were going to be in 10th next year."

"Unohana learnt of my skill with healing kidō and petitioned for me to be placed in 4th immediately instead," the redhead explained quietly, hands glowing green as she soothed his raw and bleeding lung tissue. "Today's my first day. I think she spotted me experimenting and wants me to teach others how to do my personal techniques."

"That sounds like Unohana," Jūshirō agreed, sagging slightly to lean against her shoulder. "Congratulations on graduating early, beloved."

"Thank-you," Amagurai murmured, brushing his hair back from his face so she could kiss his cheek. "I'll be able to visit more often now that I'm a shinigami."

Jūshirō smiled then doubled over as another coughing fit wracked his lungs.

"Ama-chan?" he asked her a few hours later when the horrible sucking rattle in his lungs had subsided into the occasional wheeze.

"Yes, Jūshirō?"

"Will you do me the honour of being my wife?" he asked hopefully. "I thought it best to put off asking until you finished at the Academy, but since you finished early..."

Amagurai's heart swelled in pure delight. "I would be honoured to accept," she replied with a joyful smile. "But I want to wait to have the ceremony with your family after I've reached shikai. It shouldn't take long; I can hear _something_ now, and I want to be able to show that I'm strong enough to stand by your side under my own power."

"I think you already have that strength, Ama, but if that's what you want then I don't mind waiting," Jūshirō said agreeably, "so long as you do let me marry you soon. I've already made you wait far too long as it is."

* * *

><p>Graduation and slight fluff.<p> 


	7. 1887

**19****th**** year of the Meji era (1887 AD) **

Amagurai sat on the roof of the 3rd Division building absently watching her new captain train with his lieutenant, her new zanpakutō murmuring quietly in her mind. Jōdokin had a fondness for music and very much enjoyed listening to the acoustic attacks of Ōtoribashi-taichō's shikai. She was in fact nearly as new to 3rd Division as he was, having started only three weeks before his promotion. Her transferal from 4th Division was probably the last piece of paperwork the previous captain had signed before his death.

She had been transferred shortly after learning her shikai, on being discovered by Unohana-taicho while practicing its attacks. Jōdokin was not a healing blade so 4th Division's kind captain had organised her transfer so she would be able to go out into the field and use her zanpakutō as it was meant to be used. Amagurai had been perfectly happy with the arrangement and had no issue with 3rd, but the Division's captain had fallen prey to a Hollow incursion the very afternoon of the day she was transferred and the overworked fukutaichō had been left in charge until the council of captains picked a replacement.

Amagurai hadn't minded too much: she'd been fielded by a sympathetic tenth seat who'd shown her around the Division and later challenged her to a fight. Her free time she'd spent with Jūshirō, who had been delighted to learn that he could now tell his family about the engagement so they could start planning the wedding. What time she had to be on duty in 3rd she'd spent practicing how to parry blows from different weapons with Jōdokin's shikai form, which was a fourteen-inch, sharp-edged iron fan. Weirdly enough for a tessen all Jōdokin's attacks were earth natured, which came as a nasty surprise for most people who saw a fan and expected air or fire attacks.

That whilst wielding her zanpakutō its special ability made her as immovable as the Sōkyoku hill also wrong-footed people. Her unusual weapon, speed and high kidō proficiency had seen her rise to eighth seat before 3rd Division was provided with a new captain in the form of Ōtoribashi Rōjūrō.

"Eighth seat Nishi, isn't it?"

Amagurai blinked, turning to see that her new captain had finished sparring and was sitting next to her on the roof. "Ōtoribashi-taichō? Hai. Nishi Amagurai."

"Iba-fukutaichō tells me you've only been with the Division three weeks," the slightly foppish captain said idly. "That's pretty quick work for a former 4th Division twelfth seat."

"My zanpakutō is not a healing type, which made it practically impossible for me to rise significantly higher within 4th," Amagurai said diplomatically, "and while I'm good at other types of kidō my healing lacks the fine control necessary for the higher seated positions, which is why Unohana-taichō suggested I transfer."

"Hm. Why were you watching?"

"Er," the redhead stammered, "well, my zanpakutō and I really like music, you see, so we were just listening."

"You like music?" the tall blond repeated, shedding a little of his indolence. "Anything in particular?"

"Not really; I like just about anything that's played properly, to be honest," Amagurai admitted. "I'm not much of a connoisseur."

"That's easily rectified," her captain said with an unexpectedly friendly smile. "I know several places that have live music in the evenings. I could take you there if you like."

"I'm engaged, taichō," Amagurai said delicately. Ōtoribashi seemed like a nice enough guy and she remembered him as having been a decent lieutenant, if a little lazy, but she wasn't the type to string people along, even by accident.

"Do I know the lucky man, Nishi?" Her captain hadn't even paused, suggesting it had either just been a friendly invitation or he was very quick-witted.

"He's a shinigami," Amagurai conceded.

"Well I'd still like to take you so we can get to know each-other," the tall blond said, waving a hand, "but you can invite your fiancé along as well if you'd prefer."

"I don't think he's really into music, taichō, but I'll see about introducing him to you anyway," Amagurai said, privately wondering what her indolent captain would say when he realised exactly who it was she was going to marry. The actual introduction would take time as Jūshirō was ill again and he rarely went out anyway. Mostly people visited him, Kyōraku-taichō doing so most frequently.

She fiddled with a loose bang; since joining the Gotei 13 she had taken to wearing her hair tidily pinned up on her head with fancy hair sticks. Loose it almost reached her knees, which suggested a haircut might be in order. There was such a thing as having too much hair.

"So, how about we meet outside the Division's front gate at seven then?" Ōtotribashi-taichō suggested. "There's a charming little tea house not far from here that does live music in the evenings."

"That sounds agreeable," Amagurai agreed. "Thank-you for inviting me, taichō."

"I've only been a captain for a few days, Nishi-san, and none of my new peers have even the slightest interest in music," the blond said with a sigh. "And other than you, everyone in the Division stammers when I talk to them. Other than Iba-fukutaichō of course," he added, "but she nags." Another theatrical sigh. "Oh well. I suppose I'd better return to the paperwork before fukutaichō notices I'm slacking off."

"Good luck, taichō," Amagurai said sincerely. Paperwork was a very good incentive for avoiding promotion if it could possibly be helped. Any afterlife that had _paperwork_ was surely a type of Purgatory, if not a Hell dimension.

* * *

><p>We enter 'turn back the pendulum' territory, finally. Ōtoribashi Rōjūrō enters the scene.<p>

Jōdokin means 'Lady Earth Turtle', and she's an elemental-type zanpakutō. She's also fan-shaped, and frequently used in traditional anime fashion for whacking people over the head.


	8. 1889

**21****st**** year of the Meji era (1889 AD) **

Amagurai walked briskly down the dirt road connecting Takabe with the 24th north district, the name of which she didn't know off the top of her head. The northern districts were mostly desolate wasteland and the souls who landed there either turned to banditry, died or went elsewhere. She couldn't see anyone on the road in either direction or sense anyone lurking in the bushes lying in wait for a suitable victim, which just showed how incredibly desolate this part of Rukongai was.

She didn't look anything like a fifth seat of the 3rd Division of the Gotei 13 today: her hip-length vermillion hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and the upper half of her face was veiled by spiky bangs that brushed her cheekbones. She wore cheap white hakama and kosode under a cheerful cherry pink haori kept in place by a cream obi embroidered with bellflowers. The sash had been a present from a former orphan who had become a seamstress and Amagurai was extremely attached to it. She didn't get many presents.

* * *

><p>She wasn't entirely sure why she'd felt the urge to wander all the way out here, but the vague compulsion reminded her of the time she'd gone for a run in hinode in the middle of the day and stumbled across two toddlers. Bound though she was, her kami instincts were too strong to be fully silenced and some things inevitably got through. She was needed out here, badly needed, though by whom and for what was as yet undetermined.<p>

A little while later she sensed a presence way on down the road ahead of her, faint and wavering: a strong soul, stronger than most, with a less resilient companion. Amagurai sped up from her usual ground-eating stride to a swift jog, hands absently checking the tantō that was Jōdokin's sealed form hidden in the folds of her obi and the hilt of the currently on display form of Tenin'yoshō's shikai, sheathed in a matching saya. As her zanpakutō had battōjutsu as an integral part of his combat style, her shikai was quite possibly the only one in Soul Society to include a sheath. In fact, it had manifested sheathed. She had never managed to convert the blade back into sealed form; she simply had too much spiritual energy to do so. While in shikai form Tenin'yoshō absorbed most of that power, enabling her to conceal what remained, but she still wasn't good enough to hide her presence without his help.

While the entirety of the Gotei 13 –bar her fiancé– were blithely unaware of Tenin'yoshō's existence, whenever Amagurai changed into civilian garb and wandered around in Rukongai she lightened the glamour on the split-souled zanpakutō. This made him largely beneath notice rather than completely forgettable, but there were now very quiet rumours in various districts about a polite, red-headed swordsman who never lost a fight and the inexplicable massacres of criminals that occurred in his general vicinity.

* * *

><p>As Amagurai drew closer she noted that her likely target had stopped for the night. At least, the weaker one had: the stronger one had left them behind and was coming her way. Curious as to why, she climbed a nearby tree and settled down to wait. It was getting dark by now but there was something terribly familiar about the energy signature of the presence coming her way.<p>

When the skinny silver-haired boy came into view the pieces snapped together at once. A kitsune avatar, barely more than a baby, dead before he had even realised what he was and without the memories that he needed to guide him.

That would never do.

Amagurai dropped out of her tree as her memory finally dredged up what she'd been seeing in this boy: the soul pattern of a northern mountain fox. She cleared her throat politely and the boy froze.

"Good evening, Kitsu-san," the redhead said affably. "What would you prefer me to call you?"

The boy stared at her, squinty eyes concealing his irises from view. "Gin," he said after a pause.

Silver, like his hair; fairly unusual in foxes and rather more so amongst shinigami. "I have some food you can eat if you're hungry," she offered, sitting down on the ground where she was and deliberately not mentioning his absent companion. Foxes were ridiculously possessive. She pulled out the paper packet containing the food she'd taken from the barracks before leaving and gently threw it at him. "Here."

Gin opened the paper, examined the food then cautiously took a bite. "Thank-you," he said after swallowing. "Why are you giving me this?"

"You're kitsune, at least in part. It's only polite," Amagurai said, not going into how it was patently unsafe to try to attach strings to gifts given to foxes. Kitsune were picky in that they only accepted what was freely given. They might give you things back, but that was entirely up to them.

"I'm not a fox." He seemed very certain of that, but the food she had given him was now rewrapped and hidden inside his clothes.

"An avatar of one then; a fox spirit merged with a human soul, generally while the babe was still in the womb," Amagurai determined, implacable as the tides. "It happens, but most realise what they are before dying and avoid getting shunted into an afterlife. Getting konsō happen probably messed that up for you; the memories are buried then triggered as the child grows, but yours have likely been erased."

Gin considered this. "If I were a fox, what would that mean?"

"Kitsune have very different soul patterns to humans and abide by equally different morals," Amagurai explained, "seeing as they are subject to different deities as well. They have their own code of conduct which they hold those around them to; those who abide by it are befriended and those who violate it are persecuted." She paused. "Generally with extreme prejudice I might add. They enjoy tricks and pranks, especially those that reveal or exploit the weaknesses of the victims. They are viciously protective of what they consider theirs and wreak spectacular vengeance on those who interfere with it or harm it. Their powers increase for every century of existence in a specific plain or agglomeration of plains of existence and they ascend to higher ones after nine centuries. Something about that much power being boring, I think." She paused again, glancing at her audience. Gin seemed intrigued.

"As an avatar you don't need to drain reiryoku to live, though you still have a fox form which will gain a new tail every hundred years until you have nine. I doubt you can change by yourself though, since your base form has assumed 'human' as its default."

Gin stood still, thinking hard. "You are right," he said eventually. "I remember, just. I am a fox."

"Keep it to yourself; anyone who realises and learns your true name can use it against you," Amagurai warned him, "hence why I didn't ask." She got to her feet. "I am not interested in what you plan to do with your nine centuries on this plane, but if you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason I regularly visit Takabe Village. People out here tend to call me Nishi Satsu."

Satsu, meaning slaughter or killing, had been the name the orphans in Koyabashi picked for her. It encouraged people to persist in thinking of her as male but she answered to it anyway as it reminded her of someone she'd respected a few worlds back.

"What are you?" Gin asked.

"Hitokiri," Amagurai answered simply as she turned to walk away. "Be reassured that you aren't the only soul that doesn't really belong here." With that she vanished into the night, hurrying back along the road and away. She needed to be back in Seireitei and properly alert in time for breakfast tomorrow morning.

* * *

><p>We meet Gin, who has already encountered Aizen. We don't get to meet Rangiku. Foxes are explained in detail and what little is still active of Amagurai's more esoteric powers is mentioned.<p>

Any guesses as to whom Amagurai is reminded of by the name 'Nishi Satsu'? Any at all?


	9. 1892

**24****th**** year of the Meji era (1892) **

Amagurai eyed the ceiling of her marital bedroom with sleepy contentment. She'd been married for four years now and could say with some certainty that she was enjoying it immensely. She'd also recently discovered a way to drive Jūshirō's chronic lung ailment into remission for longer periods of time, which had the happy effect of giving them more couple-time that could be exploited properly.

The wedding had been blissfully free of health-related delays and had given Amagurai the opportunity to meet her husband's family, who were surprisingly normal souls largely lacking in spiritual energy. The only shinigami at the ceremony other than the bride and groom were Jūshirō's best friend Kyōraku-taichō –"call me Shunsui, Nishi-chan!"– and her own captain Ōtoribashi, who had insisted on being allowed to give her away since she lacked male relatives.

Sadly, in the twenty seven years since she'd joined the Academy all of the remaining shinigami who had once been students of hers had died, mainly in the field. A half-dozen young people from the outer reaches of east Rukongai still joined the Shinō Academy every few years, some of whom had even taken on the Nishi surname, but none of them knew her. Even so, she liked those youngsters: they were hard working, street-smart and knew when to keep their heads down. She'd met a few here and there and liked hearing from them about the dojo; it had expanded a lot since she'd left and there were sister dojos in 32nd east and 54th south now. The Gotei 13 didn't seem to mind since 'the Nishi School' didn't teach either kenjutsu or 'proper' kidō.

Personally, Amagurai thought kidō was useless in a straight fight unless you were good enough to forgo the incantation. The little reiatsu tricks the dojo taught were far more versatile.

The Nishi School's popularity had prompted other martial artists and capable fighters to found dojos of their own, mostly in the inner districts, so more and more Rukongai Academy students were arriving with a basic grasp of Hakuda and some even had a decent idea of what you could do with your reiryoku. Amagurai was a little awed by what she'd started with her fortified warehouse out on the fringes of society.

She was also utterly, blissfully content with the life she'd built for herself. She got on well with her fellow seated officers in her Division and was on friendly terms with her captain, though she still found Iba Chikane a bit much. She also managed to socialise with a double handful of seated officers and lieutenants from other divisions fairly regularly. One such friend was Kuchiki Sōjun, lieutenant of 6th Division, who was unfailingly upbeat and happily married, making him safe to spend time with. Sōjun had a son, Byakuya, who he loved talking about to anyone who was interested. From the fukutaichō's stories it was fairly clear the boy had inherited his temperament from his mother rather than his father.

* * *

><p>In recognition that as a married man he now had other responsibilities to keep up with, Jūshirō had finally chosen a new lieutenant for 13th Division. Shiba Kaien, a member of one of the great noble houses just as Kuchiki Sōjun was, was exactly the kind of person who made a good officer and an excellent leader. He didn't care about anybody's background or natural talent, just that they gave it their all. His wife, Miyako, had also recently joined 13th Division, following in her father's footsteps: the pretty woman's sire had been the third seat Amagurai had met at Ugendō on her first day as a shinigami.<p>

Kaien had initially been rather reluctant to assume a position of such responsibility so soon after leaving the Academy, but had eventually been persuaded. Gin had also graduated after only a year's worth of training, something Amagurai had decidedly mixed feelings about. She'd managed to determine that the silver kitsune was purely motivated in his chosen career by his thirst for revenge, and judging by the people he was trying to attach himself to his target was fairly high up in 5th Division.

As Hirako Shinji didn't seem the type to provoke a young fox into spending his life raining down terrible retribution on him, Amagurai suspected the target to be Hirako's fukutaichō, Aizen Sōsuke. Considering that the classic kitsune revenge scheme involved egging on the target until they fell into a pit of their own making, Amagurai suspected Seireitei and the Gotei 13 would be heavily rattled by the time Gin was finished with Aizen.

Not that a good shaking wouldn't do them a world of good; the system was hopelessly rigid and biased towards the nobility and some of the laws were ridiculous. For example, it was against the law to attack a captain, yet attacking the captain in front of the entire division was how 11th Division traditionally changed hands, so that was allowed. Besides, what if a captain was breaking the law? It was like the law against forbidden kidō, which failed to take into account that they might just save your life when nothing else would. Soul Society was stagnant, lagging far behind Nihon in every way. Captain-commander Yamamoto may have been a powerful shinigami and a great leader to have led Soul Society to build Seireitei, found the Academy and create the thirteen Divisions, but that had been nearly two millennia ago now and the old man was unhealthily rigid in his thinking.

* * *

><p>Being a kami of considerable power and long experience, Amagurai knew she could defeat the stiff-necked old man with ease. However if she ever intended to do so and have the lesson stick she needed to administer the beating with only shinigami powers. Which meant she had to first properly master all of the four major arts. She was already very, very good at hohō, possibly even better than Shihōin-taichō of the 2nd Division, not that she'd ever been hard-pressed enough to prove it. Tenin'yoshō required speed and accuracy above everything else so hohō mastery had been an essential part of leaning to wield him. Of course, he hadn't taught her the same way the Academy had, but that just meant she had more aces up her sleeves than most shunpō experts.<p>

Her kidō was also exceptional, partly due to many lifetimes of experience in energy manipulation, and while her healing skills were still good enough that Unohana-taichō would welcome her back into 4th at the drop of a hat, her true specialty was Bakudō; the Way of Binding. She had invented dozens of more or less complicated kidō to protect areas and people, but less well-publicised was the subset she'd more-or-less invented from scratch that she called Inheidō: the Way of Concealment. This included everything from the small glamours she used to hide Tenin'yoshō to spells that made people forget the existence of entire buildings.

In contrast Amagurai's zanjutsu was, by shinigami standards, fairly average. Jōdokin's sealed form was a tantō and required a different fighting style altogether and the zanpakutō's shikai was an iron fan with similarly limited reach. Of course nobody had ever lived to tell the tale of her mastery of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryū, the style Tenin'yoshō had beaten into her, but even so it was not a style that the Gotei 13 would approve of, being for melee combat and indiscriminate slaughter rather than honourable duelling.

She was reasonable good at Hakuda due to her extreme physical resilience and decent reserves of strength, but she was not yet a master by any means. She was however working very hard at it since having a tessen as a shikai meant being able to punch people and have them stay punched would be a distinct advantage. She was already extremely good at dodging, but as Ōtoribashi-taichō pointed out, she needed to counter-attack as well. Her zanpakutō worked best when she stood firm and did not give ground, which was the total opposite of what Tenin'yoshō had drilled into her.

What was really slowing her progress however was that Amagurai was sneaking out into Rukongai in every spare moment she had to train towards bankai with Tenin'yoshō. Her older blade had painfully exacting standards he expected her to reach before he would even deign to manifest for her. This slowed her progress with Jōdokin, who became chilly, aloof and very difficult when she felt neglected.

Temporarily putting her worries out of her mind, Amagurai snuggled closer to her slumbering husband. She might be facing a few challenges here and there, but overall life was good.

* * *

><p>All is well in Amagurai and Jūshirō's life. Everything is wonderful, in fact.<p>

Shame that it doesn't last for much longer...


	10. 1900

**32****nd**** year of the Meji era (1900 AD) **

Amagurai perched silently on the top of the wall separating 5th Division from 8th Division, still dressed in hitokiri garb, teeth set and knuckles white as her fingertips gouged holes in the stone under her hands. Part of her really, really wanted to hunt down and messily murder Tōsen Kaname, Aizen Sōsuke and Ichimaru Gin, but the more rational part of her knew it wouldn't do her any good at all. It certainly wouldn't bring back the dead. Gin she couldn't kill properly anyway because he wasn't really human and he'd be incredibly angry with her if she interfered with his revenge scheme, which meant she couldn't kill Aizen-fukutaichō either. Which was a shame since he'd masterminded the crime.

Which only left Tōsen, who if she was honest with herself was the one she most wanted to kill anyway. The fifth seat had _murdered_ his 9th Division comrades, including Eishima Shinobu, the fourth seat, who had been one of her closest friends going back to the Academy. The gentle, level-headed shinigami had always welcomed her into his Division when she stopped by in between visiting Rukongai or 13th Division and had sparred with her for hours on end so she could improve her footwork.

But Shinobu was dead now, leaving a bleeding wound in her heart. She'd felt him die from clear across Rukongai and had dashed to the scene as fast as she could run, heedless of the fact that she was dressed and armed as a hitokiri. She'd been expecting a Hollow, possibly one of the stranger ones that showed up from time to time, or maybe even an Adjuchas. Instead she'd arrived just in time to see her captain keel over oozing white fluid as his soul warped and stretched in a way that made her feel distinctly queasy. Lurking in the shadow of the trees with her power as tightly leashed as she could manage she'd noticed that Ōtoribashi-taichō was not the only person being warped by the dense sphere of corrupted energy she could sense: Hirako-taichō was there too, as were Muguramura-taichō and his fukutaichō Machiro-chan from 9th Division, Aikawa-taichō from 7th and the lieutenants from 8th Division, 12th Division and the Kidō Corps. They had all bee spiritually destabilised by that source of foul energy that was tugging at her senses.

Amagurai had instantly locked down her reiryoku completely on feeling that clinging hunger brush against her outer defences. She knew exactly what _that_ was: a tama. Or more accurately, somebody's attempt at making a tama. Which explained only too well where all those missing souls had vanished to.

* * *

><p>Aizen had fallen into the trap most people did on trying to create a tama: he thought it was all about quantity. It wasn't. A true, stable tama could only be created when a person untangled their soul from their inner power and condensed that power into a gem. Dragons and foxes made tama instinctively so they could hide more easily in the human realms; that the jewels were so spiritually dense they could warp reality was just an unintended side effect. Aizen was too avaricious to ever be able to create a true tama.<p>

Not that he couldn't still do an incredible amount of damage with an unstable false one.

Amagurai sighed and shook out her stiff shoulders as she resettled herself on the wall. She'd been there throughout Aizen's arrogant monologue and the more recent news that Urahara-taichō had been arrested for the fukutaichō's crimes indicated that the bespectacled menace had covered his tracks well. That Gin had been there too and just stood by indicated that the kitsune was involved in this, egging his enemy on into ever greater acts of depravity until the man eventually overreached himself and was brought crashing down. Amagurai was a patient being. She could wait, too.

To be perfectly honest with herself, Amagurai didn't really care if Aizen reduced Soul Society to rubble and anarchy; it wouldn't upset the Wheel of Fate were he to do so. She was only here because she loved Ukitake Jūshirō and so long as her husband was alive and well everyone else could rot.

Well, almost everyone else. Her husband needed his friends and she had friends as well. But that was still not very many people. Only shinigami could determine the fate of this intermediate world and she wasn't really a shinigami. She could fiddle around the edges a bit, but free will was absolute. Aizen's choice was to seek power; she had to respect that. That however had not stopped her from warning Jūshirō and wouldn't stop her from shaking down Seireitei's other interfering non-human.

Her mind made up, Amagurai dropped off the wall and and made her way to the section of the 5th Division barracks where Gin slept, her dark blue and much mended haori blending in with the shadows.

* * *

><p>Letting herself in through his bedroom window she put up a kidō to obscure her presence and kicked him in the leg, waking him up.<p>

"Satsu-san!" The fox-faced boy said with a grin as soon as he'd got his bearings. "What brings you here?"

"Your revenge killed a friend of mine and warped the soul of another against his will," she told him evenly, hand fingering her zanpakutō's hilt.

"Ah." The smile faded. "What a shame. Anything I can do to even the score, Satsu-san?"

"You owe me a life and a permanent spiritual maiming, kitsune-san," Amagurai said evenly, voice harsh and low as she fought the urge to just kill him and the others and leave the mess to be sorted out in the morning. "Rest assured that I'll be coming to collect."

"Satsu-san, you-" Gin began. Amagurai held up a hand.

"I'll not involve your lady, Ichimaru Gin. My word on that."

Gin relaxed a little. "I shoulda known you'd find out who I was getting vengeance for, Satsu-san."

"She's your only friend, Gin-san; it wasn't exactly hard," she pointed out with a faint twitch of the lips. "Don't get too attached to Tōsen." With that she leapt back out of the window.

The words, "wouldn't dream of it, Satsu-san," drifted after her on the early morning breeze.

* * *

><p>Three days after the official sentencing of the missing captains and lieutenants was made public, Amagurai stood quietly before her fukutaichō in the courtyard in front of 3rd Division's central offices.<p>

"Do you care to explain, fifth seat Nishi?"

Amagurai did not, but decided that saying so would be a very poor decision. "I desired an opportunity to spar, Iba-fukutaichō."

"You wanted to spar," the older lady repeated flatly. "So you-" she looked down at the report in her hand "-broke down 11th Division's front door and challenged their seventh seat to a fight. Then after he had to be rushed off to 4th Division with life-threatening injuries you challenged the sixth seat. Then the fifth seat. Then the fourth seat. All of whom were also admitted to Fourth in short order."

"Hai, fukutaichō," Amagurai said simply, well aware that she was dripping other people's blood all over the courtyard and that her hair and uniform were sticking to her like a gore-encrusted second skin.

"After defeating the fourth seat you were challenged by the third seat and were busy fighting him when Yamada-fukutaichō from 4th Division came and told you both to stop, as they were running out of officers capable of healing the injuries you had inflicted. Third seat Asano then insulted Yamada-fukutaichō by calling him a, ahem, '4th Division pansy' and you chopped Asano-san's legs off at the knee, then offered to show him what his insides looked like. Am I right?"

"Hai, Iba-fukutaichō." Amagurai did not bother to protest that she'd promised to put him back together properly afterwards. She had been in Fourth too once, she knew how it was done. She also pretended not to notice the audience her very public dressing down was attracting.

"Fortunately Kiganjō-taichō of 11th did not register a formal complaint regarding your behaviour, saying it was good for his men to be challenged, so there will be no official reprimand, Nishi-san. However I must ask what you were thinking!" Iba-fukutaichō thundered, finger pointing at Amagurai's nose. "This reckless behaviour, this, this crude brawling, is not what 3rd Division stands for!"

"My apologies, fukutaicho," Amagurai murmured, bowing.

"Stuff that, Nishi! Explain yourself!"

Amagurai obediently straightened up and looked her lieutenant in the eye. "Our captain is gone, Iba-fukutaichō," she said quietly, voice as soft and deadly as quicksand, "and I very much want to kill someone for that loss. I thought it best that I remove myself to 11th Division lest I succeed."

Iba Chikane twitched. "We are all grieving, Nishi-san," she said less stridently, "though I know you were closer to Ōtoribashi-taichō than most. But violence will not change anything."

"I know, fukutaichō, believe me, but I can't just stay here," Amagurai pleaded, waving a bloody hand at their surroundings. "It hurts too badly."

"Then I shall organise your transferal," Iba-fukutaichō said abruptly, "But not to Eleventh. Your anger would fester and consume you from within. Fifth, Seventh, Ninth and Twelfth all lack captains and Fourth, Second and First are... inappropriate. Which leaves Sixth, Eighth, Tenth and Thirteenth." She frowned at Amagurai. "You need structure and hard work to keep your mind off things. I will write a request to Kuchiki-taichō for him to accept you into his Division. This is your first serious infraction to date, so I believe you will be admitted."

"Thank-you, fukutaichō," Amagurai said quietly. "I appreciate your kindness."

"You're welcome, dear. Besides as you clearly have both strength and power, 6th Division will see to it that you also develop some style and self-control."

Amagurai bowed her head, accepting the reprimand. Joining the 6th Division in the current climate was going to be incredibly hard work.

* * *

><p>That covers the events from 'turn back the pendulum' from Amagurai's point of view. The Kuchiki running 6th Division at this point is Ginrei, Byakuya's grandfather. Iba Chikane is the mother of the Iba Tetsuzaemon who is lieutenant of 7th under Komamura when Ichigo invades. She's portrayed as a nag.<p>

'Tama' means both soul and jewel. In this case I'm using it to indicate the glowing gems foxes and dragons are often pictured with that are supposed to be a physical representation of their power and can grant wishes, which matches the hōgyoku, more or less.


	11. 1908

**40****th**** year of the Meji era (1908 AD) **

"Who are you and what are you doing in our garden?"

Amagurai looked down but did not stop practicing her kata; Sōjun-fukutaichō would be disappointed in her if she slacked off. The boy addressing her looked exactly like a younger, fiercer version of her senior officer so he was probably Sōjun's son Byakuya.

"I am Nishi Amagurai, third seat of the 6th Division of the Gotei 13," she said, dipping forward and turning her wrist as if to parry a blow from behind. "I am in the garden because Kuchiki-fukutaichō ordered it."

That seemed to satisfy the boy's curiosity, though he stayed close by and watched as she slowly went through another fourteen of her modified fan dances.

"Those don't look like sword moves," he said eventually, head tilted slightly to one side like a bird. "I'm Kuchiki Byakuya, son of Kuchiki Sōjun," he added belatedly, realising he hadn't introduced himself.

"My zanpakutō's shikai form is that of an iron fan, Kuchiki-san," Amagurai said evenly as she moved to start another form. "It requires a very different set of moves."

The boy blinked. "How can you kill Hollows with a _fan_?"

"Very easily, if that fan is also a zanpakutō," Kuchiki Sōjun said, coming up behind his son and making the boy jump. "Would you be willing to show Byakuya here a little of your skill, Amagurai-san?"

Amagurai nodded, shifting her stance a little so that her feet were planted side by side, knees slightly bent and drew the tantō that was her blade's shikai form from her obi. Holding it point up, blade facing out, she spoke the release command: "Hinder, Jōdokin!"

The blade seemed to fall sideways in both directions at once until Amagurai was holding a 28 inch wide fan of dark steel with a sharpened outer edge and black silk covered in dull golden tortoiseshell patterns covering the lower two-thirds of the ribs.

Closing the tessen with a flick of the wrist and a sharp snap, Amagurai bowed shallowly to the young teen. "Attack me then, Kuchiki-san."

"Go on, Byakuya-kun," Sōjun encouraged his son. "Amagurai-san won't eat you."

The boy glanced from one adult to the other, drew his practice blade and lunged. Amagurai batted the blade away with a firm blow from her closed fan then clocked her opponent under the jaw with the blunt side of her weapon.

"Dead. I'm not a third seat for nothing, Kuchiki-san," she chided him. "Take me seriously."

Byakuya staggered backwards, shook his head slightly then tried again, more cautiously this time. Amagurai easily parried the blows aimed at her torso and knocked away the ones aimed at her limbs, feet never shifting from where they were firmly planted on the ground. Jōdokin's primary ability was to make her as one with the earth and so long as her feet were firmly planted not even a Menos could shift her against her will.

"Of course, many zanpakutō are not limited to physical attacks," she added, catching a strong overhand slash with Jōdokin then letting a few of the fan's outer ribs drop out of her hand. "Second Obstacle: Trip!"

The ground in front of her feet rippled and rose up like a miniature tidal wave, spreading outwards and knocking her opponent backwards off his feet, sword flying from his hand as he tried to catch himself.

"That will do for now, Byakuya-kun," Sōjun said firmly, catching his sons shoulder before the boy could grab his sword and try again. "Thank Nishi-san for the lesson."

Byakuya bowed shortly. "Thank-you, Nishi-san."

"Do you understand what the purpose of the lesson was, that you are thanking me for teaching it to you?" Amagurai inquired carefully.

The boy blinked. "Er, just because a zanpakutō doesn't look like a weapon doesn't mean it isn't one?" he ventured.

"Hai. And that most zanpakutō have more to them than initially meets the eye," Amagurai finished for him. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Kuchiki-san."

"Could," Byakuya glanced at his father, "could you visit again, Nishi-san? I enjoyed sparring against you."

Amagurai took that to mean, _I want to learn how to beat you_, and smiled. "I would have no objection to it, Kuchiki-san, but our respective duties have priority."

"I'll speak to Otō-sama and see if he will allow Nishi-san to tutor you in the shinigami arts," Sōjun said with a faint smile. "Her kidō and hohō are exceptional and her hakuda is almost as good."

Byakuya looked much more hopeful at that and thanked his father before running off. The two shinigami then set off back to 6th Division to return to their duties.

"Yoruichi used to play with him," Sōjun said eventually. "I think he's missed having company. There aren't many children his age in the great noble houses."

"He's a young hothead," Amagurai said with a ghost of a smile, "but he has great potential."

* * *

><p>Young Byakuya is rather adorable, isn't he? Amagurai is third seat now, as high as you can rise in the Gotei 13 by yourself. Captains choose their own lieutenants when they need replacing and the council of captains has to select, test and approve of new captains.<p> 


	12. 1916

**5****th**** year of the Taishō era (1916 AD) **

Amagurai lay a little uncomfortably on the bed in the room she shared with her husband in the Ukitake family home, feeling like a beached whale. Her pregnancy had become impossible to hide six months ago so she'd finally filed for leave, requesting two years in which to tend to 'family responsibilities', which was the official euphemism for having children. Most female shinigami did not return to the Gotei 13 after giving birth but Amagurai could see no reason not to do so. Once weaned and old enough to toddle her child could stay at Ugendō with a nurse, safe under the watchful eyes of her husband and the 13th Division. Jūshirō stayed at the estate regularly when he was ill and Amagurai herself would be able to visit every day.

Her husband's fukutaichō, Kaien, knew that Jūshirō was married –though he hadn't the faintest idea to whom– and wouldn't bat an eyelid at having to deal with a wayward toddler every now and then. Sōjun knew both that she was married and to whom and had been the one who sort out her leave after explaining to his father and captain that Amagurai's husband was the heir of a minor noble house, which explained both why she was a shinigami and why she'd be returning to the division once her leave was over: few of the minor houses were at all wealthy and the Gotei 13 paid highly seated officers very well.

Byakuya had been trickier to deal with, but she was only taking a year off from being his tutor and balancing his training with childcare for the remaining year.

A contraction made her cringe and sag back against the cushions, panting. This pregnancy had come as a total surprise to both her and Jūshirō: children were rather rare in Soul Society. The Shinigami Women's Association had thrown her a massive party on her last day to celebrate, most of them seizing the opportunity to try and coax out of her the identity of her husband. Amagurai had politely evaded every last inquiry and left behind the impression that her husband was nobody they knew and probably a civilian.

Amagurai snorted then winced. Jūshirō was anything but a civilian. He also had dozens of admirers in the SWA so if the truth ever got out she'd be the envy of half of Seireitei.

As the contractions became more frequent Amagurai rang the gong sitting beside the bed to summon the midwife. It seemed this firstborn was in a hurry to enter the world.

* * *

><p>Two weeks later Amagurai was sat on the veranda of the Ukitake family home, distinctive hair completely hidden under a white headscarf, feeding her baby son. Jūshirō had named the boy Saichō, possibly in recognition to the boy's improbable colouring: little Saichō-chan had green eyes like his father but rather than black or red hair had a mess of indigo curls. In certain lights his hair looked even bluer, closer to sapphire.<p>

Her baby had a healthy appetite and a strong reiryoku in addition to being so utterly adorable that women were turned to mush at forty paces. Jūshirō's younger sisters all found their new nephew completely adorable and would quite happily have taken over his care for her had Amagurai's mother-in-law not shooed them off home to their own husbands.

After Saichō finished feeding Amagurai burped him then hummed to him, holding him close so he could feel her heartbeat. After he fell asleep she also closed her eyes and dozed lightly, reiryoku stretching out around her so she would not be surprised by any unexpected arrivals.

Her mind had been drifting for a while when her instincts wrenched her back to consciousness and she found herself standing in the garden, baby clutched to her chest and zanpakutō in her other hand, searching around for the Hollow she _knew_ she'd sensed.

"Amagurai?" Jūshirō stared at her from the doorway connecting the veranda to the house, coughing into the bloody handkerchief clutched in his fist. "What-"

"Sh." There had been a Hollow right there, but it had vanished completely from her senses. Warily Amagurai walked back up to the house and up the steps towards her husband.

... And there it was again! She didn't even think, throwing her zanpakutō at the small yet infinitely malevolent presence. Jūshirō yelped and recoiled as the blade passed between his hand and his face and stuck, quivering, in the wall.

There was a faint but extremely familiar wailing cry and Jōdokin clattered to the floor.

"A Hollow? How?" Jūshirō looked badly shaken, face pale and slightly green.

"I think," Amagurai said carefully, enunciating every syllable so as to maintain her composure, "that we may have finally discovered what exactly is infecting your lungs, beloved." She laid her still-sleeping son in his cradle and silently called up a kidō barrier around him, then walked over to pick up her zanpakutō.

"I, I'll go to Unohana at once," her husband said, looking very pale rapidly approaching the early stages of shock. "I'll stay away from you and Saichō-chan until-"

"Don't," Amagurai said firmly, stepping closer so she could hug him tightly. "I've never noticed this before and neither has anyone else, which suggests you're not normally contagious. Besides, didn't you tell me you contracted this as a child? Adults probably aren't vulnerable and you've never had anyone else get it whom you spent time with, have you?"

"No," Jūshirō conceded, "but what about Saichō? I didn't get it until I was just entering puberty."

Amagurai frowned. "Barrier kidō are effective against Hollows, no matter what size they are. I can make a partitioned barrier in sections so you can hold him without breathing on him, which should do for now." She looked her husband in the eye. "We _will_ fix this."

Jūshirō sagged against her, eyes moist as he kissed the top of her head. "Thank-you, Ama-chan."

Amagurai hugged him harder. She wasn't worried; she was furious. There were miniature Hollows lurking in her husband's lungs, feeding on him! They would _die_.

* * *

><p>Saichō means 'colourful tide', which is related to Jūshirō's name as his means 'fourteen waves'.<p>

I've always wondered how a person's soul could suffer from a consumptive-type condition, so here's my explanation for the problem: he has teeny-tiny Hollows chewing on his lung tissue! Squick!


	13. 1930

**4****th**** year of the Shōwa era (1930 AD) **

Amagurai wandered home from her training area in the 14th northern district in a bit of a daze. She had quite a bit of free time nowadays as her son was finally old enough to begin lessons and had been taking advantage of that in order to further her training.

Once Saichō was weaned one of Jūshirō's cousins had taken over nursemaid duties at Ugendō and Amagurai had returned to her shinigami duties. She had still visited her baby son every single day, spending as much time as she possibly could with him. She always changed into civilian clothing and wore a scarf over her hair while at home, just in case some-one who knew her happened to drop in looking for her husband. Jūshirō visited just as often but rarely got very close, wary of infecting their son with the micro-hollows.

Both Unohana-taichō and Kurotsuchi-taichō had been surprised to discover the true nature of Jūshirō's lung condition and were trying to deal with it, though the captain of 12th Division seemed more interested in how the illness worked than in actually curing it. Amagurai had comforted her husband with the promise that, if it came to it, she would arrange for him to have surgery to remove his lungs completely, then use her power to grow him new ones. Then Kurotsuchi-taichō could experiment on the old lungs to his heart's content. Jūshirō had made her promise to go through with it if they hadn't come up with a cure by 1935.

Amagurai loved her son dearly. She'd witnessed his first smiles, first steps, first words and had made sure his first wobbly attempts at drawing were pinned up on the walls in her husband's office. Currently Saichō was having lessons from a tutor who visited six mornings a week to teach the boy to read, count and write calligraphy as well as ensure he learnt his history, etiquette, law and various other necessities.

The reason Amagurai was wandering back to Ugendō in her hitokiri outfit despite the winter afternoon still being light enough that someone might recognise her was that she had just achieved bankai with Tenin'yoshō for the first time. She'd been working towards this moment for twenty five years and to actually have achieved it at long last was staggering.

Of course, now she would have to train with her bankai until she knew it as well as her shikai, but that was not too much of a problem.

* * *

><p>She dropped over the garden wall on automatic, pushed aside a large rock to reveal a hidden trapdoor and dropped down, secure in the knowledge that the rock would move back into place after her. In the small underground room she had build long before ever joining the Academy Amagurai changed into a matronly kimono, styled her hair up in a tidy bun fastened in place with kazeshini then covered the whole arraignment with a white shawl before securing her zanpakutō on her person again. As a number of shinigami had learnt just before losing a fight to her, the hair sticks Amagurai wore contained sharp blades sheathed within the wood and her hair ribbons had explosives laced through them. No matter how demure and ladylike she appeared to the casual eye, she was third seat of the 6th Division and had attained her rank through sheer hard work.<p>

Of course, she was also still spending much of her time training Sōjun's son Byakuya in the shinigami arts, which was not a task for the faint-hearted as the young man was improving at a truly dramatic rate. He had reached shikai years ago and was easily seventh seat material, possibly as high as fifth seat. He was coming along very nicely in all areas, though there had been a few rough spots after her year off having her son. Byakuya was a privileged child and had found it difficult to understand that there were things that were more important than being a shinigami and training him. She had eventually had to explain it as different types of duties: as a shinigami, her first duty was to her captain and the Gotei 13, but as a woman her first duty was to her husband and his family. The Gotei 13 had given her a year off so she could provide her husband with an heir, as was expected, so that her duties would not conflict.

Possibly as a result of this slight jealousy Byakuya had yet to show an interest in the identities of either her husband or her son. It was a testament to his conviction of his own worth that he had never even thought to ask her husband's name.

After stretching her senses to ensure nobody was around to see her leaving the hidey-hole Amagurai scrambled out again, straightened her clothing and made her way demurely to the main house. Jūshirō and the nurse both found her insistence on disguises rather childish, but they were amazingly effective when combined with her unique ability to modify her own reiryoku signature. The nurse however still had orders to keep shinigami at a distance while she was playing with her son, just in case.

Jūshirō was perfectly happy to humour her: he was the only person in all of Soul Society who was aware of her double life, after all, and he kept her secrets religiously. He had shared a little of what she knew about Aizen with his best friend, of course, but nothing about her involvement. She went looking for him, walking around the outside of the house: she wanted to share her latest achievement with him.

The servants were naturally aware that she owned some odd garments that were neither her uniform nor the clothing she wore at home, but Amagurai passed them off as practice wear to keep her other clothes from getting damaged. Considering how cheap her hitokiri outfits were and how often they had to be darned, she doubted they ever suspected otherwise.

* * *

><p>Life goes on. It's the long stretches of time where nothing in particular happens that you miss when things start getting 'exciting'. Never mind that you could go your entire life without that kind of excitement.<p>

The baby grows up to a toddler, then a child. Even though it happens slower than it would in the real world.


	14. 1932

**6****th**** year of the Shōwa era (1932 AD) **

Amagurai was permitted to attend her fukutaichō's funeral solely on merit of her position as personal tutor to said fukutaichō's son and heir. In the twenty five years since she'd been granted the post Byakuya had grown from a scrawny almost-teenager to a young man, though he had yet to learn how to properly reign in his truly dreadful temper. Amagurai was extremely proud of her pupil: he was now extremely good at kidō, hakuda, hohō and zanjutsu, had mastered his shikai and was now working towards bankai. Not that he realised she was aware of that last piece of news; he had probably wanted it to be a surprise to impress his father with.

Sadly, Byakuya's skill and Sōjun's death when put together meant that Amagurai was no longer required to give the Kuchiki heir lessons; the funeral marked the final ending of her student's childhood. Tomorrow, his grandfather informed him, he would be joining the 6th Division as a lieutenant as was proper for the clan heir. He would also be taking private lessons with his grandfather on how to lead the clan, as Kuchiki Ginrei intended to turn over the position of clan head to Byakuya within the decade, providing the younger man proved capable.

That, however, would be starting tomorrow. Today she stood beside her charge and one step behind, soberly clad in mourning garb, a silent supporter in his time of grief. She, too, was grieving the loss of Kuchiki Sōjun, but less severely: he had been her friend, not her father, and she had been the one to chase down and obliterate the Gillian that had surprised the fukutaichō so fatally.

That evening Amagurai hunted down her former student in his favourite place in the garden: next to the koi pond under the sakura trees.

"I can't replace my father, Nishi-sensei," Byakuya whispered hoarsely as she sat seiza next to him on the grass. "Why does Ojī-sama expect me to?" In his hand he had his father's lieutenant's armband, now clean of the bloodstains that had decorated it when Amagurai had helped her squad-mates bring the body home.

"I don't believe he wants you to truly replace him, Byakuya-kun, but you are the heir to the Kuchiki clan now and unfortunately that means you are expected to shoulder the duties that your father, as the previous heir, had been responsible for until now," Amagurai said softly. "Which means, my dear young reprobate, that you will have to put a bit more effort into abiding to the rules. A word of warning, though: rules are created from experience to manage what is known. When dealing with the unknown it is often safer to ignore the rules as they may not apply and trying to follow them will then lead you astray or into danger."

A ghost of a smile passed over the young lieutenant's face. "I'll remember, sensei."

* * *

><p>Byakuya's father dies and Byakuya is moved from 'heir's son' to 'heir' and expected to behave appropriately despite just having lost his only remaining parent.<p> 


	15. 1946

**20****th**** year of the Shōwa era (1946 AD) **

Amagurai was walking through the barracks after leading a patrol against an unusually strong Hollow incursion into southern Rukongai when she was waylaid by her senior officer.

"Kuchiki-fukutaichō?"

"Could you spare me a little of your time, Nishi-san?" her former student asked her. His choice of words suggested this wasn't official business.

"Of course I can, Byakuya-san," she replied with a smile that received a faint, slightly distracted smile in return. Amagurai pondered that smile as Byakuya led her away from the Division and into the Kuchiki family gardens. Sōjun's death had been nearly fourteen years ago now and in that time Byakuya's smiles had become extremely scarce. The last one she remembered seeing was three years ago, when the newly instated Kuchiki clan head had taken her aside to inform her that he had finally managed to reach bankai. That smile had been full of fierce triumph, but this one suggested a quieter joy.

Byakuya eventually stopped walking when they reached a pair of willows by a stream. This was a very secluded part of the grounds and Amagurai's unchaperoned presence there with the clan head would have been severely disapproved of by the elders despite her being both married and a retainer of the Kuchiki family.

"So, Byakuya-san," Amagurai said, settling herself to lean against one of the trees, "what is it you wish to speak with me about?"

The young clan head looked... was that embarrassment or curiosity? "Amagurai-san, who is it you are married to?"

Amagurai blinked. "What brought this on?"

Byakuya blushed; he was embarrassed then. "I recently realised that, while I have always known you were married, I do not know anything about your husband, not even his name," he admitted, "and nor do I know the name of your son. I cannot properly allow this ignorance continue now that I understand they must be a very important part of your life."

Amagurai smiled slowly at her former student. "So who is the young lady fortunate enough to have inspired such an epiphany?" She wanted to sing: her student had fallen in love! If only his father could have seen it.

The young clan head smiled a warm, happy smile with an undertone of confused wonder. It was definitely first love. "Hisana," he murmured. "Her name is Hisana and she is perfect."

"How so?" Amagurai pushed gently, well aware that the young lady in question was most certainly a commoner for him to have not even mentioned a family name. There was nobody else in his family who would be willing to listen to their clan head ramble about the common girl he'd fallen in love with and she hadn't seen him look so happy in far too long.

"I met her whilst returning from patrol; she served me tea. It tasted lovely," Byakuya said dreamily. "She's beautiful, gentle, polite and very modest."

Amagurai knew exactly how impossibly picky Byakuya was about his tea. A cup made to his exacting standards was likely one of the few ways a girl could actually get his attention, sadly. "I take it she's a reborn soul rather than a new one, then," Amagurai said calmly. "The elders will likely be upset."

"Let them be," Byakuya said coolly, temper flaring just under the surface. "I'm going to marry Hisana."

"I wasn't about to try and stop you, I promise," Amagurai said with a smile, "so don't bite my head off, Kuchiki-sama. Now, I believe this conversation started with some questions you had about me."

"Hai." Byakuya looked interested.

"Your father knew who I was married to; he had to since it was he who made me a retainer of the Kuchiki clan, specifically his retainer as I was employed to teach his son. However he deliberately didn't write that information down anywhere."

"I see." He probably did. Byakuya had been made to sit through all kinds of lessons and lectures before Kuchiki Ginrei retired and made him clan head.

"The name I am registered as a shinigami under is Nishi Amagurai, my maiden name, but my married name is Ukitake Amagurai," she told him with a wicked smile. "My husband is Ukitake Jūshirō and our son is called Saichō."

Byakuya's jaw actually dropped a little. "You are married to _Ukitake-taichō_?" he said, stunned.

"For half a century now," Amagurai said cheerfully, "and we were engaged for nearly thirty years before that."

"I cannot believe that you have managed to keep this secret for so long," Byakuya said after a short silence.

"Kyōraku-taichō knows and I believe Unohana-taichō has guessed, but no-one else in the Gotei 13 has any idea," Amagurai said, not mentioning the exiled Ōtoribashi Rōjūrō who had not only known but been at the wedding. "Most people still don't believe Jūshirō is married despite there having been a child in his home for the past thirty years."

"You were from Rukongai too, were you not? Ukitake is a noble clan."

"A very minor noble clan," Amagurai prevaricated, "and yes, I did spend more than twenty years in Rukongai before coming to the Academy and becoming a shinigami but I did not arrive there from the human world."

Byakuya frowned. "Then you are a new soul, Amagurai-san?"

Technically yes, since she had never actually died since first coming into being however many hundreds of millennia ago it was now. "I am, yes."

"What happened to your family?"

Amagurai shrugged. "Nothing that I'm aware of. I dare say they're still out there somewhere though they wouldn't recognise me if we passed in the street tomorrow."

From the slightly disgruntled look on her young friend's face Byakuya interpreted her words to mean that she's been disowned very young. From the odd looks he was giving her hair she guessed that he thought she was the product of an affair, and her unusual colouring had been all the proof her mother's husband had needed to get rid of both wife and child.

"Now I will probably regret this later but I'm going to say it anyway," Amagurai said, poking Byakuya in the shoulder to get his attention. "You're the clan head. You're going to be 6th Division captain. So get on and lead."

From the pleased and rather wicked smile that brightened Byakuya's face at her words he understood exactly what she was trying to get across. The Kuchiki elders would never know what had hit them.

* * *

><p>Byakuya falls in love! Naturally he turns to the only person he knows likely to be sympathetic for advice.<p>

Have you ever had a friend you knew was married, but never met their husband/wife or even knew their name as your friend never mentioned them by name? Yep, it happens. Especially if you're a bit self-absorbed like Byakuya is. He did notice eventually though.


	16. 1951

**25****th**** year of the Shōwa era (1951 AD)**

Amagurai had not voiced a single complaint about being dragged from her warm bed in the middle of winter by a pale and painfully desperate Kuchiki Byakuya, nor would she ever. She'd known that his wife wasn't very well, but that he'd hunted her down at Ugendō in the middle of the night and all but carried her back to the Kuchiki mansion suggested that the doctor's prognosis had been both dire and terminal. She did not begrudge her lieutenant, former student and friend a second opinion on his beloved wife's condition.

Though that still didn't excuse his upsetting the household of another, senior, captain in the middle of the night to drag said captain's wife out of bed and clear across Seireitei.

Amagurai was a much better healer than her grasp of reiryoku-based healing would suggest, as her abilities in that area were heavily boosted by her few remaining unbound kami abilities. However that meant her powers were subject to certain limitations that human talent was not, which led to the discussion in the study where Byakuya finally broke down and cried.

* * *

><p>"She's soul sick, Byakuya-kun," Amagurai explained gently, her cup of tea cooling quietly on the table. "It's not the kind of illness that can be cured. Some part of Hisana feels that she deserves to die, so she is dying. The problem has been there for a very long time but has gotten much worse in the past few years."<p>

"How to I help her?" Byaluya pleaded, pale and desperately unhappy under his failing mask of noble propriety.

"There is nothing you can do," Amagurai said softly, a sudden pain stinging inside her chest that this conversation was having to happen at all. "Hisana feels that she's done something terrible, something that she deserves to die for. I'm not saying she has-" Byakuya looked outraged at the mere idea "-in fact she probably hasn't done anything so unforgivable, but she is such a very gentle, kind and loving soul that she feels horribly guilty for whatever it is she did. The guilt is literally killing her and she is letting it because she thinks she deserves it."

"What do I do?" the young clan head repeated, one hand rising to cover his eyes as he set his own tea cup back on the table.

Amagurai sipped her own tea politely. It was perfect. "Be there," she said simply. "Tell her how much you love her and need her and if she asks you for something, say yes. If she tells you why she feels so guilty, promise to resolve it. But don't tell her why she's ill; it will just make her feel worse about herself and hasten the end."

"You can't heal her?"

Amagurai set down her empty cup and sighed unhappily. "She won't let me, Byakuya-kun. I can feel her pain so keenly that it hurts my heart but she refuses to let go of it. I've tried; believe me, I have tried but she just pushes me away. She truly believes she had hurt somebody very badly in the past and she also knows that her marrying you hurt your standing with the clan elders. She doesn't understand how much more important she is to you than those stuffy fools' good opinion."

"Self sacrificing to the end," Byakuya murmured, a tear escaping one eye to slide slowly down his cheek.

"I will stay and make sure she is comfortable until the end," Amagurai said quietly, eyes on her former student's hands rather than his face. "I've sent a message home. Please let Kuchiki-taichō know he will be without a third-seat for a month or so."

"That soon?" Byakuya croaked.

Amagurai looked up to meet his eyes. "I really wish I could say I was mistaken, Byakuya," she said sadly, memories of the deaths of past husband and children echoing in her heart. At that the cool noble mask Byakuya had been hiding behind crumpled. Amagurai quickly cast a bakudō on the room to stop any sound from escaping, then hurried around the table to comfort the young man she'd always seen as a sort-of nephew through the sudden realisation that he was going to lose the wife he loved so completely.

* * *

><p>Six weeks later Amagurai was the only other person present at the small, private funeral Byakuya held for his wife. Shortly before dying Hisana had confessed to her husband the source of her guilt: she had abandoned her baby sister in Rukongai shortly after the two of them had arrived from the human world. However when the guilt of doing so caught up with her and she went back the toddler was nowhere to be found. Hisana had never stopped looking but the guilt and grief had gradually weakened her and eventually killed her. She had made Byakua promise to find Rukia and adopt her as his sister, but also to never reveal that Hisana had if fact been Rukia's sister. Hisana felt she didn't deserve to be remembered as such.<p>

Byakuya had promised, then had shut down completely when she finally passed away two days later. It really worried Amagurai. She was already dealing with a sick husband, a son just entering puberty and a vengeful fox she felt it prudent to keep an eye on; adding a grieving pseudo-nephew with no other emotional support to the load was making it hard to keep up!

Jūshirō was much better than he had been as Kurotsuchi-taichō had come through and created a cure that killed off all the micro-hollows in his lungs, but as a result of the centuries of damage and the properties of the medicine his lung tissue was both heavily scarred and very fragile. Her husband would likely suffer from shortness of breath and cough up blood when under stress for the rest of his life, but at least now it wouldn't kill him. Not that Amagurai was just letting the problem lie: she intended to see her husband fully healed, consequences be damned.

Saichō had grown up to be his father all over again, gentle, empathetic and patient with a core of pure steel, though he also had his mother's talent for artless subterfuge. He looked like his father as well, tall with an angular face and vibrantly green eyes under messy indigo hair, though he also had his mother's more slender build. Combining that with his father's height and the growth spurt he was going through, the teen looked rather scarecrow-esque at the moment. Saichō made friends easily and was very well thought-of, but kept his own council in most matters unless asked directly. Amagurai had to tease his concerns out of him with great care and patience when he was worried, since he never volunteered his unease. He however never hesitated to tell her when other people were upset, absolutely secure in the knowledge that his rather unusual mother could fix things.

Amagurai's connections to the Nishi School had made it possible for her to locate and hire a suitable tutor to educate her son in the basics of combat and self defence until he was ready for the Shinō Academy, provided he was interested at all. Hadome Yahiko was young-looking, mature and highly skilled in physical combat, though the first time she saw him almost gave Tenin'yoshō a heart attack. The zanpakutō had flooded her with an incoherent tangle of emotions and images when they spotted him in 21st District East. He and another, older man had been leading a class training with bokken in a defensive zanjutsu style that did not require actual blades, which explained nicely why the shinigami hadn't tried to shut it down. Their particular branch of the Nishi collective was called the Hadome school, as it taught its student to defend themselves from sword users rather than how to use a blade to attack or defend.

Yahiko had also shown a moment's confusion on first seeing Amagurai, but had been very receptive to her request that he teach her son. Saichō had swiftly become attached to his new sensei, no matter how strict the man was, and worked incredibly hard at his training.

* * *

><p>Amagurai did not want to neglect either her family or Byakuya, so she chose to delegate what she could and take advantage of the network of Nishi dojos that were now scattered throughout Rukongai to help find Hisana's sister. Armed with a dozen ink paintings of the newly deceased lady Kuchiki, she had scouted out a few dojos in each quarter and asked them to let her know if anyone knew anything about a girl called Rukia who looked like the one in the picture. Hisana claimed to have landed in Inuzuri, Rukongai's 78th southern district, but the nearest Nishi dojo was only in 75th south. Still, it was a start.<p>

She did hope Byakuya would stop shutting her out. It wasn't his fault Hisana had died.

She also wanted to murder the Kuchiki family elders for not deigning to attend the funeral. They all acted like they wanted to sweep the woman's very existence under a mat and marry their clan head off to another lady of more suitable breeding.

* * *

><p>Hisana dies. I really think that most of Soul Society's illnesses have to be psychosomatic, since they are souls rather than having truly physical bodies. In this case, Hisana's guilt literally eats her up from the inside.<p>

This also explains why Ichigo and others are more powerful and dangerous when they're confident. Belief is a powerful thing.


	17. 1952

**26****th**** year of the Shōwa era (1952 AD) **

Amagurai took one look at Byakuya when he got back to the Kuchiki mansion after talking to the woman they'd identified as being Hisana's sister, kicked out all the servants and politely informed the elders that 'Kuchiki-sama' had an important appointment and would be unavailable for the rest of the evening. Then she dragged the shocky-looking clan head into his dressing room and firmly ordered him to change into something cheap that made him look like a civilian. Then she hurried off to change into something appropriate for going out and about in Rukongai.

Hisna had been dead for over a year but it seemed that reality had just kicked Byakuya in the teeth; Rukia did look an awful lot like her sister. However she also seemed to be a much stronger person, one who was unlikely to allow grief to kill her. Which was likely what had set Byakuya off in the first place.

On returning to the Kuchiki mansion in her hitokiri outfit under the cover of darkness she determined that Byakuya's choice of outfit was suitably mundane, made him take off his kenseikan and tie his hair up in a ponytail, took Senbonzakura off him and left the blade by his bed then dragged him out of the house and over the garden wall into the grounds of the Shinō Academy.

The Academy had a river running through its grounds that left Seireitei through a culvert under the sekki-seki walls and meandered its way south through Rukongai. This made the river one of the few ways in and out of the Court of Pure Souls not under guard, though to take advantage you had to be able to hold your breath whilst travelling underneath the wall itself. Getting out was fairly simple as you just went with the current; getting back in was trickier but still possible. Byakuya tried to protest as his retainer and onetime sensei dragged him over towards where the river went under the wall but discovered that not only was his third seat far, far stronger than she'd ever shown him in a fight but she also knew a few kidō that prevented people from noticing them. He struggled a little more violently once he realised that she was about to dunk them both in the river but was unable to escape in time.

Once they surfaced under a pier in Rukongai Amagurai used another low-level kidō to dry their clothes then dragged her reluctant lieutenant off to find a decent bar that rented out private rooms for parties. She eventually found one in 2nd South.

* * *

><p>"Keep the drinks coming," Amagurai growled at the older man who had shown then into the cramped room containing no furniture other than a low table, handing over a generous wad of notes. "His wife died," she offered by way of an explanation, nodding in Byakuya's direction. The man nodded in understanding and vanished, returning in short order with a rack of bottles and a pair of sake saucers.<p>

Amagurai shut the door firmly behind him then sat Byakuya down at the table and settled herself opposite him, pouring out drinks.

"I haven't seen you look this bad since you dragged me out of bed winter before last to get my medical opinion," she said bluntly, handing him one of the saucers and taking the other for herself.

Byakuya looked down at the sake but did not respond, face as blank as a marble statue. What really convinced Amagurai that her former student was not at all well was that he had not voiced out loud a single protest during the whole time she'd been dragging him out here. Such compliance, however reluctant, was not normal.

"Drink," Amagurai said, imitating the firm tone she'd heard Unohana-taichō use on recalcitrant patients. Byakuya responded on instinct, emptying the alcohol down his throat in one smooth movement before coughing at the strength. Amagurai poured him some more and glared at him until he drunk that too.

"She, she looks so much like Hisana," he eventually said after his third saucer, "but different as well. She isn't as gentle or as kind. But I can't tell her about Hisana, about how much her sister cared for her, because I promised not to. I can't look at her, Nishi-sensei," he said plaintively, "it hurts." He swallowed more sake and stared into space as Amagurai refilled his saucer. "The elders are so angry that I've brought yet another commoner into the pure and noble house of Kuchiki and Grandfather was very disappointed that I'd flouted the rules again." A tear slid down his cheek although the perfect mask of noble indifference remained in place. "I miss Hisana. Would otō-san really be disappointed in me?"

"Your father would not be disappointed," Amagurai said firmly, vowing to arrange a few messy but harmless accidents for Kuchiki Ginrei. "He wanted you to be happy. Hisana made you happy and keeping your promise to adopt Rukia would have made her happy. Sōjun would just shake his head, smile and say you were as headstrong as your mother. You helped him miss her less." She refilled his saucer again and sipped some of her own. While she had no intention of getting drunk a certain amount of pleasant buzz would make it easier to go with the flow. "He would have loved Hisana. She and I wrote haiku together in spring, you know. Most of hers were about sakura blossom," she glanced over at Byakuya, "she thought your zanpakutō was the loveliest thing she'd ever seen."

That cracked the Kuchiki clan head's apathetic mask and he swallowed several gulps of sake in an attempt to hide his loss of composure.

* * *

><p>As the evening wore on Byakuya gradually got drunk enough to let out all of his bottled up misery, anger and loneliness at losing his beloved wife. Amagurai let him snuggle and cry on her shoulder, plying him with more sake and enough fruit juice to reduce the chances of a hangover in the morning. Then once he'd cried himself out she tried to cheer him up by telling him some of the more silly stories of things she'd witnessed his father doing, including a few Sōjun had made her swear never, ever to tell his father Ginrei about. She was successful enough that Byakuya was giggling when he finally passed out, at which point she hauled him up to hang over her shoulder, gave the barman a hefty tip in thanks and carried the unconscious Kuchiki back towards the walls of Seireitei.<p>

Getting in was actually easier that getting out had been: since Byakuya was out cold she didn't have to worry about him taking note of her less-than-commonplace abilities. Hence why instead of using the river she used a hohō variant to walk up the air parallel to the muffling wall then did a short run up and threw herself over it, landing silently in the grass near the edge of the Academy grounds with her still-unconscious passenger slung over her shoulder.

Less than half an hour later Byakuya was tucked up in bed and Amagurai was crashed out in her own small room in the 6th Division barracks, her hitokiri outfit hidden in a box under the floor. With a bit of luck Byakuya would not be too severely hung-over in the morning and would be feeling better for letting his feelings out. The last thing he needed right now was a nervous breakdown.

When morning came around Byakuya acted as though nothing had happened at all the night before, but Amagurai could tell he was far less brittle than he had been in months. He never, ever mentioned or gave any indication that he remembered what had happened the night after he met Rukia for the first time. Amagurai understood; some things were too private. She never mentioned it either, not even to her husband.

* * *

><p>Byakuya meets Rukia and adopts her into the Kuchiki clan. I think Byakuya would have found it very difficult indeed to keep his promise, considering how much she looked like Hisana and how much he missed his wife. Getting him drunk was the only way he would ever talk about it though, so Amagurai resorted to desperate measures.<p>

I think she's ended up as a bit of a mother figure to him, or possibly more of a big sister. Nonetheless, somebody dependable who listens to him without judging.

Please review! I like hearing what people think.


	18. 1955

**29****th**** year of the Shōwa era (1955 AD)**

Amagurai wandered through Seireitei, headed in the general direction of the 11th Division. Less than a year ago both Byakuya and Gin had been promoted to captain, which led the fox avatar to gently tease his noble colleague whenever they met. Gin always prodded at Byakuya's sense of propriety through being just slightly over-familiar, which was –from a kitsune– a friendly and backhanded warning that the Kuchiki's sore points were not very well disguised.

Byakuya had shortly afterwards used his influence to secure his newly adopted sister an unseated position in the 13th Division, a tacit confession that he had no idea how to connect with Rukia on a personal level and hoped Jūshirō would look after her for him. Kaien took a shine to the girl and she seemed much happier of late.

Despite Byakuya now being captain of the 6th Division Amagurai had not been promoted any higher than third seat: the fukutaichō position had been taken up by Shirogane Ginjirō, the former fourth seat. Since the Division acknowledged fourth seat Shirogane and third seat Nishi as being about equal in power, with Amagurai hanging on to her position through virtue of her considerable seniority, no-one questioned his being elevated over her. That he was much more popular helped. Anagurai's main claim to fame within the Division was of having been a close friend of Byakuya's father and was therefore generally considered to be a bit unapproachable by the younger officers. Shirogane was somebody no-one would hesitate to approach, thus making him a better choice.

Byakuya hadn't asked Amagurai at all, though he had explained to her why he had not: he hadn't felt he had the right to ask any more of her than he already had. She was married with a teenage son, her husband was often ill and yet she was still prepared to help him with whatever he was having trouble with at the drop of a hat. He felt he could not in good conscience ask her to do anything more for him. Amagurai had thanked him for his thoughtfulness in protecting her from the demonic paperwork with solemn sincerity, which had teased a smile out of him.

* * *

><p>Amagurai was currently wandering over to 11th Division to visit a friend. Well, several friends really: a little over a month after she'd destroyed 11th's top four seated officers Kiganjō-taichō had been defeated, killed and replaced as captain by his challenger, Zaraki Kenpachi. Zaraki-taichō was the eleventh Kenpachi to lead Seireitei's heavy combat division and he had been followed into 11th Division by one hanger-on and two dedicated disciples: Kusajishi Yachiru, his foster-daughter and fukutaichō, Maderame Ikkaku and Ayasegawa Yumichika. The latter two had quickly risen into the upper seated positions in the squad.<p>

The quartet had soon heard about her from the rest of 11th –she had acquired a certain infamy amongst Soul Society's most blood-thirsty bruisers– and Ikkaku and Yumichika eventually hunted her down for a fight. Yumichika had watched; Ikkaku had lost, but he'd reached his shikai just before losing.

After that first fight, in which she'd still been a little wild after losing her former captain to Aizen's machinations, she'd gotten into the habit of dropping by 11th Division every so often to catch up and spar. Zaraki didn't seem to mind; he thought she was a bit too meek to be a proper shinigami and sometimes said so, but since Amagurai got on well with Yachiru he generally let it slide. He'd never actually sensed enough of her power to be interested in challenging her to a fight, which was deliberate on her part: she had got in the habit of concealing most of her spiritual power decades ago. If she hadn't she would have been wandering around with an aura even more oppressive than Zaraki himself had. She dreaded him ever learning how much she held back: the resulting fight could flatten half the city!

Part of why 11th liked her might have had something to do with how every so often a fighter would show up at the gates of the Shinō Academy, armed, grim and battle-scarred, claiming a quiet redhead had told them they could become shinigami and kill monsters. Most of these had been swordsmen in life and most of them were shunted into 11th Division fairly quickly.

* * *

><p>The first of these men called himself Miburō Saitō and remembered leading the infamous Shinsengumi back when he had been alive. He had been out and about in Rukongai and had spotted a ponytailed redhead who looked familiar jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the middle of the night.<p>

Amagurai had not expected to be addressed as "Battōsai" by a tall, wolf-faced left-hander but had heeded Tenin'yoshō's interest and dropped to ground level to see who the man was. Saitō had been surprised to discover that the person he'd thought was the infamous hitokiri and his former rival was in fact a total stranger, and had been even more embarrassed when he noticed she was, in fact, a woman. Amagurai had brushed off his apology, saying it wasn't the first time she'd been mistaken for the Bakumatsu assassin: in the period between 1862 and 1890 she'd had to defend herself from large numbers of disgruntled souls, many of whom retained the dying memory of being killed by a short redhead with long hair wearing white hakama and a dark coloured haori. Seeing as he had spiritual energy she'd told him about shinigami and a bit about the different Divisions. The man had signed up in short order, informing the cowering man at the door that 'a red-haired lady' had told him about shinigami and that he wanted to join. Saitō had been inducted into 11th Division fairly quickly and had eventually risen to fourth seat after Iba Tetsuzaemon left to join 7th Division. He would have been fifth seat except that Yumichika thought the kanji for 'five' was prettier than the kanji for 'four' so refused to rise any higher.

Seeing as Zaraki-taichō, Yachiru and Ikkaku were who they were, Saitō ended up doing most of the Division's paperwork and leaving it on their desks so his captain and lieutenant could sign their names at the bottom. As a result he was the person in Eleventh that you needed to talk to if you actually wanted something done that did not involve fighting and was the shinigami who inevitably arrived on the scene if large numbers of officers were admitted to 4th Division. Amagurai could tell that, were Yachiru not her captain's daughter in all but blood and name, Saitō would have been promoted to the post. Zaraki-taichō liked his attitude and he was very efficient, having dealt with military paperwork in life enough for some of it to have stuck.

Amazingly however, other than Unohana-taichō nobody outside 11th Division even knew who Zaraki's fourth seat was. Many seemed convinced that Eleventh didn't actually have a fourth seat anymore because they never heard about him. Amagurai was well aware that the silence was born of deliberately cultivated fear: Saitō scared people, especially everyone less powerful than he was within Eleventh. He scared them so badly they didn't talk about him, for fear he'd hear them and come looking. Zaraki-taichō loved fighting, as did Ikkaku and Yumichika, but Saitō was a stone cold killer. He didn't play with his opponents to draw out the fight like his senior officers in the Division did, he just killed them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Amagurai suspected that part of why Ikkaku and Yumichika were so careless of their safety when playing with their opponent was the certainty that, if they misjudged things and wound up dead, Saitō would still be there to mop up afterwards and organise the burial. She also firmly believed that the reason it hadn't happened yet was that they didn't want to give him the opportunity to say something scathing at their funerals.

Yachiru liked Saitō because he never even twitched when she called him 'wolf-face'.

Saitō was observant enough to have noticed that the hitokiri look-alike he'd met in Rukongai was one and the same with the unobtrusive third seat of 6th Division, but he never spoke of it. He did turn up to spar with her whenever she dropped by Eleventh and their battles were always very violent and very, very fast but to his frustration he could never push he hard enough to force her to draw the sword he knew was there, even if he couldn't see it. He probably would have found being thrown around by a girl with a fan even more embarrassing except that Ikkaku never beat her either, though the bald shinigami insisted her having a kidō-type zanpakutō was cheating.

Amagurai always laughed at his grumbling and said it was only cheating if you hadn't worked for it, then sometimes offered to spar again, just with hakuda and hohō this time. Ikkaku was rarely able to take her up on her offer due to his injuries, but other seated officers usually did and the ease with which she threw them around inevitably got her point across.

* * *

><p>Because roughing up seated officers in Eleventh was bound to have consequences. Plus, meet new people!<p> 


	19. 1967

**41****st**** year of the Shōwa era (1967 AD) **

Amagurai had been out wandering in east Rukongai pondering her son's sudden decision to join the Shinō Academy when a familiar and highly agitated chakra presence caught her attention. Curious but wary, the redhead in white hakama and indigo haori used shunpo to get closer, careful not to attract attention to herself. It took a lot to upset Gin, but he was definitely upset at the moment. Which begged the question of why he chosen Tokabe Village of all places to get drunk at. True, people around here were more tolerant of shinigami than most of Rukongai's outer district inhabitants, but it was still a bad place for a stranger to pass out in, even if that stranger was a shinigami captain.

"Satsu-san?" an old man wheezed as she dropped off a roof into the village square. "Watch your step. Shinigami-san in the Drowned Frog was asking after you."

"Don't worry ojī-san, I know him," Amagurai reassured the elderly farmer before heading towards the bar. Now she realised why she'd been drawn to wander so far outside Seireitei in the middle of the week: her instincts were on overdrive. Anything that led Gin to get drunk mid-week this far from Seireitei had disaster written all over it.

She pushed open the door of the bar and on ducking inside was immediately glomped by a very giddy 3rd Division captain who smelt like he'd been drinking for hours. "Satsu-saaan! I've missed ya so much! How are ya? I've been lookin' for ya all over but nobody'd tell me nothin'." He frowned. "I don't think they like me much here, Satsu-san," he added in an overloud whisper, leaning heavily on her shoulder as he tried to stay upright. "Oooh. Spinny." He swayed.

Amagurai grabbed hold of the fox avatar so he didn't fall over and leaned forward to drop a fistful of notes on the bar to pay for the inconvenience of having to deal with a buzzed captain whose reiatsu control was fluctuating. Then she grabbed Gin's arm, pulled it across her shoulders and half-carried him out of the building. "C'mon Gin; you've had quite enough for one night."

"Nowhere near enough, Satsu-san," Gin responded, shifting abruptly from vapid giggling into abject misery. "I've messed up big. Total disaster time. Wasn't careful enough and now my Rangiku-chan's in baaad trouble." He sniffled, rubbing his face on his sleeve.

Amagurai's brain quickly sifted through the ways Gin's carelessness could have gotten Matsumoto Rangiku into trouble and settled on the most likely one: "Gin, is your lady pregnant?"

* * *

><p>Fortunately for Amagurai they'd left the village completely by this point and were out in the middle of the rice fields as the captain responded to her query by releasing a strong but very uneven reiatsu pulse and banging his forehead on her shoulder. "I'm an idiot, Satsu-san!" He wailed. "I sensed it early 'cos it feels kinda like I do but she's gonna notice soon then Aizen'll notice an' I'll have to kill 'im early an' I'll get executed for it 'cos nobody knows he's a total bastard! Then I'll be dead an' Ran-chan'll be miserable! What'm I gonna doooo?"<p>

"Sober up, for starters," Amagurai grunted, looking around. She was going to have bruises. "Where's that well..."

After locating the well and emptying a bucket of very cold water over Gin's head the conversation became a little more constructive. In the interests of keeping things straight the 3rd Division captain spilled everything he knew and suspected about Aizen. Which proved a lot more than Amagurai had previously thought likely.

"I can solve the problem without your lady ever realising she was pregnant," Amagurai said eventually after several plans had been discussed and discarded, "but only by invoking the life you owe me."

Gin froze. "You'd take my kid?"

"The child would live," Amagurai hastened to reassure him, "and be raised in a family that loved them. Aizen would never suspect the child was other than they appeared to be. However you would not be known to them and you would not even know who or where they were until your vengeance is completed." She waited for his response.

"Who'd you give the baby to?" Gin finally asked. "An' how'd you get it away from Rangiku without her or anyone else noticing?"

"I know of any number of lesser noble families who would be happy to adopt," Amagurai said, "and as for how, I did say you weren't the only being in Soul Society who wasn't really supposed to be here." She smiled mirthlessly, unpleasant memories surfacing. "It isn't as hard as you'd think to steal an unborn child. It's even easier when the mother doesn't know and you have the father's permission."

"So you'd take the kid, sent it somewhere safe so no-one knows it was mine an' Rangiku's," Gin concluded. "An' I won't owe you a life anymore."

"You would still owe me a permanent maiming though," Amagurai reminded him. "But yes, that is essentially it."

"So, how exactly _do_ you steal an unborn baby?"

Amagurai grinned, baring teeth. "Your lady has a habit of passing out drunk, Gin. It shouldn't be too hard to find her like that and take advantage."

* * *

><p>It was in fact ridiculously easy. The morning after her pact with Gin, Amagurai orchestrated an 'accidental' explosion in 12th Division to cover up her theft of one of the earlier models of Kurotsuchi-taichō's experimental gigai. Once its tracking systems were thoroughly neutralised she hid the faux body in one of her secret burrows under Ugendō and set up a complicated ritual circle around it. Then late in the afternoon she bumped into Matsumoto herself, who had recently been promoted to lieutenant of the 10th Division under the child prodigy captain Hitsugaya Tōshirō. The new fukutaichō invited Amagurai over to her Division for a drink, Amagurai accepted and two hours and some spiked sake later the strawberry blonde was passed out on a couch in her office surrounded by bottles. It was then easy enough for Amagurai to remove both the developing foetus and a chunk of womb lining from Matsumoto's body, wrapping the tiny mass of developing cells in pure celestial power to keep it alive and hiding it under several layers of cloaking kidō. A quick healing spell later and Rangiku was no longer pregnant and none the wiser.<p>

Amagurai then hurried back to Ugendō and transplanted the foetus into the womb of the gigai, activating the layered ritual circle as she did so. The purpose of the circle was to sustain both gigai and foetus by draining spiritual energy from a living source; in this case, her own body. This was necessary as the unborn child was at least part kitsune, so would need a lot of spiritual energy to sustain it. What Amagurai had not told Gin was that, had the foetus not been removed, it might very well have killed Matsumoto Rangiku before the time came for her to give birth. There was a reason why all the stories were about fox _wives_ rather than fox husbands.

The drain was immediate and severe enough that the redhead had to get Tenin'yoshō to release a substantial portion of her suppressed reiryoku to balance it out. That process being completed made the baby truly hers, as it was her soul sustaining it. All that remained was to give the child a true name.

A careful scan revealed that the foetus was female and after some thought Amagurai decided to name the unborn kitsune girl Kitsuko Hinageshi. The name had the right weight for a traded soul-child of a fox avatar and her personal name maintained the flower theme of that of her first mother.

Amagurai intended to eventually adopt the baby herself, presenting it to friends and family as the daughter of a widowed friend. Jūshirō would then give the baby a suitable everyday name and everything would go on from there. She doubted Saichō would mind having a baby sister now he was entering the Academy and her husband would certainly enjoy the opportunity to be a proper parent now he was no longer sick.

* * *

><p>Because accidents do happen and Gin's had everything going his way thus far. Plus, I wanted to see him drunk. It is everything I hoped for and more.<p>

Enjoy!


	20. 1971

**45****th**** year of the Shōwa era (1971 AD) **

Amagurai had been covering for another of Shirogane-fukutaichō's absences and sorting through the accumulated paperwork when Byakuya let himself into the office without even knocking.

"You are needed in 13th Division, Nishi-san," her captain told her gravely. "A Hollow entered the Division within the body of a wounded shinigami, then killed numerous officers, later took over the body of Shiba Kaien and attacked Ukitake-taichō and Kuchiki Rukia. Rukia managed to kill it before it succeeded but the Division is now short a lieutenant and most of the upper seated officers due to death or serious injury."

Amagurai blanched. She barely knew Rukia but the girl was still a Kuchiki and Jūshirō relied heavily on Kaien to keep the Division running during his still frequent bouts of infirmity. A Hollow attack on his Division would likely aggravate her husband's condition and anyone who could have run things in his absence was dead or dying.

"Shiba Miyako is listed amongst the dead, though her body was completely consumed," Byakuya added, bowing his head. "Take as long as proves necessary."

Amagurai bowed in thanks and dashed from the room, only pausing in her own office to grab her medical backpack. Lieutenant and third seat dead, other upper-level seated officers dead or badly wounded, captain seriously incapacitated. This was going to be a nightmare.

* * *

><p>Ten days of feverish work and very little sleep later Amagurai became lieutenant of 13th Division. Jūshirō wryly informed her that Byakuya had approached him and politely told him that he needed a competent lieutenant to run his division for him. "He gave me this look," her husband added with a smile, "and told me not to underestimate you."<p>

Amagurai was not on the best of terms with her husband at that moment in time but she still accepted the promotion. As far as she was concerned Kaien's death had been unnecessary: had her husband restrained his subordinate from acting rashly in his grief the fukutaichō would still be alive. His loss –not to death but to suffer in the stomach of a Hollow– would not have occurred had Jūshirō been less hung-up on the importance of so-called honour. Honour did not demand that Kaien avenge his wife's death; that was anger and loss. Honour demanded that the Hollow be destroyed so no more would suffer, no more and no less, and they had failed to ensure that. Many people confused honour and pride when true honour lay in humility.

Despite that thorny and painful difference in opinion that had led Amagurai to shout and throw things at her husband before bursting into tears, the bound kami was glad to be working closer to home even though it meant more paperwork. Baby Nihyōko, named for her silver-blue eyes like frozen lakes, was walking and talking now and Amagurai wanted to be around her adopted daughter as much as possible. The little girl had vibrantly red hair very much like Amagurai's own, which encouraged peoples' belief that she was the daughter of one of her adopted mother's dead relatives. Amagurai still needed to teach the incredibly perceptive child all the things a baby kitsune needed to know, which would be much easier now she was 13th Division's fukutaichō. Nobody would question 13th's lieutenant if she was seen with her captain's child, especially when the child was a very smart little girl. Kaien had played with Saichō often enough when he had been younger that the little boy had followed the lieutenant around whenever he could.

Amagurai missed Kaien terribly. He had looked after Rukia and been one of her husband's few surviving close friends. True, Jūshirō did try to make new friends whenever he could, but most people were so in awe of the senior shinigami captain that they never managed to open up and be properly friendly. Shiba Kaien had been like a breath of fresh air in that respect; he didn't care who you born, just what you were prepared to make of yourself.

Saichō was now safely ensconced in 10th Division and quietly working his way up the ranks. He would never be more than lieutenant level, lacking bankai potential altogether, but he would be a very strong lieutenant. He certainly worked hard enough. Entertainingly, despite going through the Shinō Academy as 'Ukitake Saichō' few of his fellow students realised he was the son of the captain of 13th; when people asked if they were related he said yes, but did not elaborate further. As a result most people believed he was Jūshirō's nephew or some such.

* * *

><p>In that insanely hectic ten-day period Amagurai made time for three meetings: one with Gin, one with Rukia and one with what remained of the Shiba clan. The meeting with the Shibas came first: the day after the incident, when she'd finally got the story straight, Amagurai dressed in her best uniform, stuck her zanpakutō's sealed form in her obi and walked up to the fancy front door of the house belonging to one of the five great families. As the Shiba clan had just lost both the clan head and his wife, there were murmurs that soon there would soon be only four great families.<p>

Nonetheless she was allowed entrance and ushered into a neat room with a traditional layout to await her hosts. After a short wait and a quiet scuffle outside the room the doors opened to admit Shiba Kūkaku, eldest Shiba still living and a small boy with a fierce scowl.

"Amagurai-san," the young woman said evenly. "Kuchiki-san returned Kaien to his family last night and he died shortly after thanking her for killing him. What exactly happened to my older brother?"

Amagurai had been unaware that Rukia had done that; if she was anything like her sister had been she'd be feeling horribly guilty for killing her mentor and lieutenant.

"Shiba Miyako-san led a squad out to hunt Hollows the day before yesterday," she began, "but yesterday around noon we received news that she and her entire squad had been killed. The bodies were brought back to 13th. However the Hollow that killed them had concealed itself within Shiba-san's corpse, which once inside the Division it animated and used to kill and grievously injure those who tried to prevent it from escaping. After it had fled into the woods Ukitake-taichō and Shiba-fukutaichō arrived at the scene and chased after it, Kuchiki-san accompanying them. Shiba-fukutaichō located it as it finished consuming Shiba Miyako-san's body and attacked it. Unfortunately this Hollow had the ability to temporarily disable zanpakutō." She paused. It would not do to mention that Jūshirō had chosen not to interfere; however noble the sentiment Kaien was dead due to that decision. Besides, she did not want to upset the little boy glaring at her from under his eyelashes any further. "Shiba-fukutaichō then engaged the Hollow directly. This proved a mistake, as it invaded his body and possessed him as it had Shiba Miyako's corpse. The Hollow then used him to attack Ukitake-taichō, who ordered Kuchiki-san to run and get help. The Hollow chased after her and attacked her, but impaled itself on her sword as it lunged." Another pause, this time while pretending not to hear the little boy sniffling. "Shiba-fukutaichō then returned to himself, mortally injured. As his wounds were contaminated by Hollow energy he could not be healed, so he resigned himself to death."

"She killed him!" the small boy blurted out angrily. "She said so! It's her fault!"

"Ukitake-taichō ordered her to defend herself," Amagurai said gravely. "Her actions while under his orders are his responsibility."

The boy frowned, face screwed up. "Ukitake-taichō ordered her to kill Onī-san?"

"He _ordered_ her to kill the Hollow." Amagurai said carefully. "She did so. Unfortunately for everyone involved, your brother also died. However, I can promise you something, Shiba..?"

"Shiba Ganju," the boy mumbled.

"Shiba Ganju-san. I, Nishi Amagurai do swear that if I ever find where your brother's soul has gone I will secure it and return him home to you. Is that acceptable, Shinba-san?"

Ganju nodded. His sister nudged him, face slightly disapproving. "And what do you say..?" she prompted him.

"Thank-you, Nishi-san," he said dutifully.

"Good boy. Now go fetch Koganehiko for me, will you?"

After Ganju left Kūkaku fixed Amagurai with an angry glare. "That was cruel, putting his hopes up like that. Kaien's dead and gone and he's never going to come back."

"We never found the Hollow after Kaien died, Shiba-san," Amagurai said calmly, heeding the gut instinct that was urging her to continue. "If the Hollow isn't dead, then it's still out there somewhere and Kaien's soul with it. This Hollow had a unique way of eating shinigami but I'm yet to meet a Hollow who'll willingly leave a meal. It will come back, and when it does I'll be there. I'm better than anyone else in Seireitei at sensing individual souls, Shiba-san; I'm sure I'll find him eventually."

Kūkaku snorted. "If you say so. However you are not welcome in my home until the day you bring my older brother back to me."

Amagurai bowed. "So be it."

* * *

><p>The meeting with Gin was a hit and run in the middle of the night.<p>

"You owe me a soul, Gin: One of Aizen's Hollows ate a friend of mine."

"A soul an' a permanent maimin', Satsu-san. I won't forget."

"See that you don't."

* * *

><p>Talking to Rukia had been much harder. Amagurai had tried to convince the young shinigami that Kaien's death was not her fault, but hadn't been able to get through to her. Guilt complexes seemed to be a family failing. Nonetheless, Amagurai tried again a week after her promotion to fukutaichō, this time taking a slightly different angle:<p>

"Kuchiki-san, do you know why I'm still here?"

Rukia eyed her new fukutaichō warily. "Onī-sama recommended you to Ukitake-taichō."

"Do you know why, considering he promoted his fourth seat over me when he had to choose his own lieutenant?"

Rukia blinked. It seemed she'd not been aware of that little titbit. "No, Nishi-fukutaichō, I don't."

"I joined 6th Division and rose to third seat under Kuchiki Ginrei-sama when he was captain. Kuchiki Sōjun, Byakuya's father, was my fukutaichō and a good friend."

Rukia looked interested. She'd clearly never heard anything about the man who would have been her adopted father if he'd lived that long. Amagurai continued:

"Sōjun-fukutaichō and I became fairly close, close enough that he eventually asked that I become a retainer of the Kuchiki clan. When he died my allegiance passed to Byakuya, who was made fukutaichō in his father's place and later became the clan head."

Rukia looked a hundred miles away, probably because this was more about Byakuya's past than she'd even realised existed. Amagurai knew her former student was a bit quiet, but to not tell Rukia about her family, the real and important stuff, was a serious omission.

"When he was later promoted to captain he promoted the fourth seat over me, though he knew I was just as capable and qualified," Amagurai continued. "Many shinigami felt it was done to get out from under his family's shadow as I was a clan retainer, but he told me I had given enough of my life to the Kuchiki clan. Which is why I believe he was pleased for the opportunity to recommend me to Ukitake-taichō." Not the whole truth, but enough of it to make sense.

"Because he knew you could do it and didn't want you wasting your potential?" Rukia ventured.

Amagurai smiled. "He does so disapprove of laziness and waste, doesn't he? Yes, that's why. I also think he worries about you and wanted me to keep an eye on you rather than on him."

"Onī-sama worries?" Rukia looked dubious.

"I've known him since he was a child and I know his moods inside out," the lieutenant said firmly. "He worries and he cares. He just is very, very bad at expressing emotion. Several lectures too many on the importance of noble decorum, I'm afraid." She smiled. "If anything ever goes wrong don't hesitate to let me know. I've certainly rescued your brother from enough sticky situations in my time so you can't possibly do any worse."

With that she dismissed Rukia, leaving the petite shinigami to wonder what exactly Byakuya had done for Amagurai to word it like _that_.

* * *

><p>The Hollow incident and Kaien's death. Amagurai ensures things go a little differently with the Shibas and has a chat with Rukia.<p>

Kaien's death always struck me as painfully pointless, which I think I've explained.


	21. 1990

**1****st**** year of the Heisei era (1990 AD) **

Her second pregnancy, like her first, came as a total surprise. Nihyōko was doing well in her studies, was rapidly approaching puberty and had joined the dojo owned by Hadome Yahiko. Saichō's former tutor had used the money he'd earned to open a dojo of his own in Seireitei to train people who were either not spiritually aware enough to become shinigami or plain not interested in doing so. Nihyōko was neither; she was determined to join and eventually lead the stealth forces and wanted all the training she could get to reach that lofty ambition. Considering how remarkably capable the little girl was in the kitsune arts Amagurai did not doubt in the slightest that her daughter would succeed in her goal.

Nihyōko was a lovely child: she had grown tall and slim and kept her coppery red hair cut short so it hung wispily around her ears and in a long fringe over her forehead that parted to one side. She had her biological father's chin and smile but her eyes were the same shape as her original mother's. Her nose and build however were her own, though Amagurai could see some of Gin's leanness in it, combined with the potential for Matsumoto's curves.

It was in fact Nihyōko who first noticed her mother's pregnancy and announced it bluntly over a private family dinner one evening. Jūshirō immediately choked on his rice and had to be patted on the back by Saichō, who still lived at home half the time.

* * *

><p>"Don't you dare try to treat me like I'm made of glass!" Amagurai told her husband sternly once he'd got his breath back. "I'll stop putting my name on the rotas to go out on hunts and hand over leadership of my team to another seated officer, but I <em>will<em> continue with my desk duties even if I have to have the paperwork carried all the way to the house every day. The third seats are too immature to run the Division and have to be kept apart for any work to be done at all and you certainly can't keep them in line for many seconds!"

"Too true," Jūshirō murmured ruefully. Kotetsu Kiyone and Kotsubaki Sentarō gave him headaches, though they were strong, very capable, diligent and effective shinigami. However whenever they were both in the same room they argued like cats and dogs about who was more devoted to their captain. Amagurai found this extremely trying as it was her husband they were obsessing over. She had diverted their fierce competitiveness by first fighting and beating each of them individually then taking those of her duties that didn't strictly speaking need her doing them and divided them between the two third seats. After all, she had to do about two-thirds of Jūshirō's duties for him due to his recurring lung condition. If they had the energy to bicker they could pick up the slack.

She had told them this was extra duties to prove their competence and that failure to complete said duties would result in another seated officer being given them. Fighting would not be tolerated as it caused dissent within the division. It worked nicely: Kiyone ran kidō training sessions with the unseated officers and Sentarō ran similar sessions on hakuda. As the two were equally capable in hohō and zanjutsu they took it in turns to do both. Kiyone had also been put in charge of organising lessons in triage for those of 13th who were good enough at kidō to master basic medical techniques. Sentarō on the other hand had to create the duty rosters for patrol in the human world based on the reports from 12th, which then were submitted to Amagurai for approval. Both of these more demanding duties involved paperwork and contact with other divisions, as well as a little negotiating. This forced them to work individually yet cooperate when there was overlap between their fields. So far, it seemed to be working.

Everyone who'd been exposed to the dreadful duo was in awe of what she'd managed to do with them.

* * *

><p>Seven months later Amagurai and Jūshirō were the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl with a messy mop of dark pink hair. Kusajishi-fukutaichō had expressed her approval on visiting and dubbed the baby 'mini-me', which had made Jūshirō's smile slightly strained.<p>

Amagurai had named her daughter Sangohō and the little girl was deemed completely adorable by every woman in the Division. Oddly enough however it seemed Amagurai's ability to pass unnoticed had somehow taken root and sprouted, because even with her living at Ugendō with her husband and the baby nobody seemed to catch on that Nishi-fukutaichō was married to Ukitake-taichō. A few people thought Sangohō was Jūshirō's baby and Amagrai was staying at his home so he didn't have to spend time away from his daughter. The vast majority realised the baby was Amagurai's but thought that her captain had generously opened his home to her because she was his lieutenant and everybody knew Jūshirō was protective of his subordinates. It was slightly disturbing in a funny kind of way that nobody seemed able to grasp that Jūshirō and Amagurai were married unless she explicitly told them so. Except for Unohana-taichō, of course, but she was in a class by herself anyway.

Even Byakuya took the time to visit, though the 6th Division captain clearly had no idea what to do with a baby. He was a quick learner though and was soon cuddling the pink-topped bundle of joy that was utterly entranced by the kenseiken in his hair. The Kuchiki clan head deftly avoided her reaching fingers and merely gave Amagurai the evil eye when she pointed out that Sangohō could have preferred to chew on his scarf instead.

* * *

><p>Sangohō means 'coral foam', in keeping with the other water-based names and a tribute to her hair.<p>

The idea with Byakuya holding a baby was just too good to resist. It would totally derail any train of thought of those who witnessed the miracle!

I just realised that 'Nihyōko -two ice lakes- also contains the word 'yōko' which means fox demon. Go subconscious!


	22. 1997

**8****th**** year of the Heisei era (1997 AD)**

Shortly after Sangohō was old enough to be left to her own devices under the supervision of the family nurse –meaning she could walk and talk well enough to make herself understood– Amagurai finally reached Jōdokin's bankai. However unlike when she had made that step with Tenin'yoshō, the achievement left her more shaken than elated.

Her husband found her out on the veranda, sitting under the porch and staring out blindly into the sheets of spring rain.

"Ama-chan? Beloved?" He asked. "What is it?"

"You know that I have two very different spirits who act as my zanpakutō, Jūshirō?" Amagurai said distantly, eyes fixed on the endless fall of raindrops.

"Tenin'yoshō, the heavenly scales of light and shadow, whose blade is raised in the defence of all people and Jōdokin, the lady earth turtle, who acts as honour and duty require," her husband quoted gently as he sat down next to her. "What of it?"

"Tenin'yoshō's bankai is fierce and destructive, but the enemy may choose at any moment to surrender and be spared," Amagurai said sadly, resting her head against her husband's shoulder. "Jōdokin is not so merciful. She simply kills, instantly smothering and crushing those who stand against her. No second chances." The redhead shivered. "Duty is truly heavier than a mountain, Jūshirō."

"Shh," her husband crooned, hugging her close. "You're not a woman to kill simply for the sake of spilling blood, Ama-chan my beloved. But if someone threatened to murder your officers or our children, what would you do then?"

Amagurai closed her eyes. "I would kill them, 'Shirō," she whispered with chill finality. "Just like that. Because nobody gets to threaten what is _mine_ and live to carry out their threat."

"That is what makes you such a wonderful mother, Ama-chan," Jūshirō said simply. "It is not a fault. You take your responsibilities seriously."

They sat together for a while, the only sound that of the endless patter of rainfall.

"Thank-you," Amagurai murmured eventually.

"You are welcome, beloved."

* * *

><p>Bankai is powerful, but that doesn't mean it has to be nice. Jōdokin has a ruthless streak hidden under the pretty exterior. A scary thing to learn about yourself, as zanpakutō are very similar to their bearers.<p> 


	23. April 1st, 2001

**Until stated otherwise, the following events take place in the 12****th**** year of the Keisei era (2001 AD) **

* * *

><p><strong>U-no-hana month, month beginning (April 1<strong>**st****) **

Amagurai sat in her office in the 13th Division headquarters, sorting through the deluge of paperwork detailing the strengths, weaknesses and relative power level of all the shinigami under her command. This was something she'd instated after becoming lieutenant and despite the effort involved in testing everyone every few years it had made her life much easier overall. It was suddenly possible to form balanced teams for Hollow hunts at short notice, made it less likely for shinigami to overestimate their own skill level and made choosing who would be placed on duty in the human world much less complicated.

Sentarō had gotten very good at organising the latter duties, though Amagurai still had to approve his rotas. Kiyone on the other hand had gradually taken over the chore of testing everyone's level and progress every other year. Well, everyone was _tested_ every other year. The tests themselves were done annually, so only half the Division was being tested at a time. The regular evaluations encouraged the Division's unseated officers to train harder in the hope of being promoted to a seated position. The seated officers worked harder as well, not wanting to risk demotion. The results were clear: 13th Division had fewer casualties in the field in the past decade than any Division except 1st and 4th, and the latter didn't go into the field anyway. The Division had also gained a reputation of demanding its recruits give their everything.

The person throwing the curve however was Kuchiki Rukia. Rukia was currently about fifth seat level, but due to her brother's influence was still unseated. Amagurai understood that Byakuya didn't want his sister going on dangerous missions or leading a team against Hollow incursions, but her inability to advance was quietly eroding the young woman's self esteem. Unfortunately there wasn't very much Amagurai could do about it: Byakuya did stubborn like Zaraki-taichō did blood-thirsty. The fukutaichō was already pushing it by letting Rukia compete with the seated officers during evaluation.

All that Amagurai could do was try to set up situations where Rukia could use her skills in real like situations so the girl could build up her own confidence through experience.

Hence why, in the next room, the younger Kuchiki was being dispatched to Karakura town for a month. The area was a spiritual hotspot, so Hollows regularly gathered there or passed through, and there were unusually high concentrations of Pluses for such a small settlement. Rukai could gain battle experience there and feel useful without being at risk.

* * *

><p>At the end of the day Amagurai hurried home and changed into civilian clothing. Sangohō had reached the stage of childhood where she was vocal, highly mobile and insatiably curious and had to be kept busy and interested in safe things in order to prevent accidents. The very bright and articulate little girl was growing up fast and was now only slightly shorter than Yachiru with ear length, perpetually messy dark pink hair, rich grey eyes like her mother's and an adorable polite and caring manner. Amagurai was frequently reminded of Unohana-taichō when spending time with her youngest and was certain that her little girl would be able to inspire similar levels of fear and respect when she was older: Little Sangohō-chan had a temper than ran slow and deep and she held grudges. She was very polite about it, but upsetting her or people she cared about was still a bad idea, as Ōmaeda-fukutaichō had discovered. His careless words about her big brother had earned him the coral-haired girl's eternal enmity: strange, inexplicable and persistently embarrassing things happened to him around 13th Division for no real reason.<p>

Amagurai had not expected either of her biological children to inherit her reishi manipulation.

Then there was Nihyōko, who was well into puberty and determined to enter the Shinō Academy this year if it was at all possible. Amagurai had resigned herself to the inevitable; though the redheaded fox child did not do any work she didn't have to and knew exactly how far she could push with her father's influence and power in order to gain advantages and favours, she did not hesitate to work hard in the pursuit of her personal goals. More than anything else in the world Nihyōko wanted to head one of the subdivisions of the Omnitsukidō and the icy-eyed social butterfly considered no means or method to be cheating if it helped her reach that goal.

Privately, Amagurai knew this would make her fox-souled daughter an excellent addition to the Stealth Forces, but she still cautioned the girl against letting people know she was quite that ruthlessly mercenary.

"Reputation is a dangerous and two-edged blade," she had told Nihyōko firmly, "Soi Fon is an excellent captain but she cares too little for what others think and suffers for it. I am not saying you should take what people say to heart, but always be aware of it. If you know what people are saying then you can find ways to change their minds if their words and thoughts go against your goals." She paused. "Unohana-taichō has an excellent image. I'm not saying you should imitate her," she corrected herself at her daughter's look of mild distaste at acting so meek and demure, "but be careful. Be yourself, be bright, vibrant and sociable but remember the social niceties. Do not lose your temper when people try to provoke you: to do so grants them control over you. Violence is a last resort so please avoid using it if it is at all possible."

Unspoken was the importance of not getting caught enacting vengeance on those who wronged her; while Nihyōko had inherited much of her mother's forgiving and easygoing nature she still had her father's sadistic streak when dealing with those who crossed the line. Amagurai had educated her adopted daughter in all things kitsune from the moment the child was able to understand and the young redhead knew very well that she, her siblings and her okā-san were not like other people. Being different meant different rules, but it also meant not letting other people find out you weren't working to their rules.

Saichō on the other hand was much more like his father and far less complicated to deal with. He had risen to fifth seat in the 10th Division and no higher, despite being both strong and skilled enough to beat the Division's third seat even on a bad day. Amagurai understood why her blue-haired boy was hiding his light under a bushel though: while Sangohō had so far inherited only the ability to manipulate reishi from her mother, Saichō had the ability to hide his intentions behind masks, slight foresight and an uncanny sense of timing. A few quiet conversations revealed that Amagurai's firstborn could sense something nasty coming on the wind and deliberately understated his abilities in order to have a few aces up his sleeves when the axe fell.

She had also been surprised and relieved to learn that her son knew there was something off about Aizen Sōsuke, to the point that Saichō had managed to completely avoid the man while in the Academy and in the time since had made sure never to meet the man's eyes or be in the vicinity when he sparred. Her son's talent for dropping beneath notice was likely another aspect of his kami heritage: Amagurai somehow managed to be the person least gossiped about of all the captains and lieutenants despite being far older than all her peers except Sasakibe-fukutaichō of 1st Division and had been a shinigami longer than more than half the captains.

Part of what kept Amagurai under everyone's radar was her quiet efficiency, ladylike manners and completely defence-orientated zanpakutō. She therefore came across as obedient, unambitious and meticulous, which when combined with her marital status and utter immunity to flattery and praise conspired to make her easy to overlook and difficult to manipulate. The rest of what kept her beneath the notice of both her peers and senior officers was Tenin'yoshō's special ability to conceal as much of her reiryoku as she wanted hidden. As a result of this constant suppression her spiritual power felt barely lieutenant level and it was assumed that it was only her organisational abilities and skill in the four arts that had prompted Jūshirō to make her his fukutaichō. That she was in fact more than twice as powerful of her captain and husband was a closely guarded secret.

* * *

><p>As I'm working from Amagurai's point of view very little of the 'Agent of the Shinigami' plot arc will be revealed. There will be more of the 'Soul Society' arc, but very little on what the ryoka are actually doing. Amagurai has different priorities and methods to them and will be doing different things.<p>

I won't be covering the Bount arc or the Zanpakutō rebellion arc, except possibly in omakes. If people are even interested.


	24. June 17th, 2001

**Month of Water, four days before Summer Solstice (June 17****th****)**

Amagurai absently dismissed the 2nd Division shinigami who had requested this meeting with her and stared at the folded letter he had brought with him. Kuchiki Rukia had been supposed to return from the human world today. 12th Division's data indicated she had been doing well, sending on souls to the afterlife and purifying all the Hollows she came across, but the letter told a very different story.

On only her third day in Karakura Rukia had been injured protecting a family of spiritually sensitive humans from a Hollow and had in desperation transferred her powers to a member of said family –a teenage boy– so as to ensure their survival. The boy had killed the Hollow, which was either a ridiculous stroke of good luck on his part or a sign of truly astonishing latent talent. There was after all a reason would-be-shinigami had to pass the Academy to join. While Rukia had technically broken the law, in doing so she had avoided failing in her duties. Shinigami were called upon to defend souls and purify Hollows, so in violating the letter of the law she had maintained its spirit. Besides, reversing what had been done to the boy would not be all that hard.

Her account of what happened next was more disturbing: the young Kuchiki had been approached by a man who had not only been able to see her spirit form but had offered her a gigai. Rukia had assumed he was one of Soul Society's numerous contacts in the human world, which was not unreasonable, but Amagurai wanted to know what they were teaching at the Academy if they failed even to mention that Urahara Kisuke had been exiled for experimenting on his fellow officers!

Well, Amagurai knew he'd been framed and hadn't really hollowified his fukutaichō and a handful of other captains and lieutenants, but he had still been rather reckless in the name of scientific discovery. Besides, it was the principle of the thing that mattered.

Once clad in a gigai and armed with the necessary supplies for making sure any faux pas would be forgotten, Rukia had infiltrated the high school of the boy she had given her powers to and fed him just enough information about shinigami that he could send on Pluses and purify Hollows without getting killed. Privately Amagurai was immensely proud of what the girl had achieved: she had kept her head in a very difficult situation and managed to keep up her duties while wounded.

However Rukia had also reported that her reiryoku levels were not recovering. In fact they had dropped steadily to the point that she had barely had enough energy to partially heal the damage to a shinigami's soul form only the afternoon before she wrote the letter, an entire month after she had received the injury. That was very fishy. Especially since Rukia had mentioned in passing that the boy she had loaned her power to had possessed a latent spirit energy so massive that it had clouded her senses to the presence of the Hollow which had injured her. That suggested a reiryoku potential to rival Zaraki Kenpachi!

Amagurai knew Urahara had done something to Rukia; she was by no means a genius but she had lived long enough to know how people thought. If he had somehow supplied her with a booby-trapped gigai she would have to do a little investigating. She didn't know much about gigai, as she never used them: her kami abilities enabled her to twist her energy so she was solid and visible in the human world, and her ability with illusions and glamours was sufficient to get people not to pay attention to what she was wearing. The Central 46 however had impounded all of the former 12th Division captain's research notes on his arrest, so they wouldn't be all that hard to find.

For now however she would just grant Kuchiki Rukia the two-week extension that was the maximum a lieutenant could sign off and trust the young officer to keep things under wraps until Amagurai had found the information needed to rescue her subordinate.

Besides, she wanted to investigate this Kurosaki Ichigo who Rukia had given her powers to. Humans that spiritually gifted did not just spring up out of nowhere, especially not whole families of them. Amagurai remembered a Kurosaki-taichō who'd vanished about twenty years ago who very much resembled Rukia's description of Ichigo's father...

* * *

><p>Being a conscientious officer with a supportive lieutenant, Rukia actually reports back to explain the issue. Her fukutaichō did promise to get her out of trouble after all. Amagurai therefore ensures things stay legal and investigates on her end. Urahara may be a genius but experience beats genius ninety nine times out of one hundred and if Amagurai has anything, it's experience.<p> 


	25. July 18th, 2001

**Month of books, two days before hatsuka (July 18th)**

Amagurai was deeply irritated and very much wanted to use bankai on half-a-dozen different people in the hope that they would be less stiff-necked, arrogant and self-centred in the next life. She had been leaving the Central 46 archives after yet another day spent searching through information on Urahara and gigai –having just discovered that the exiled scientist had an interest in hōgyoku as well– when she'd spotted Gin lurking under a tree. A quick glamour so she looked like her hitokiri self and a short conversation later she discovered that Aizen had started moving. Silently cursing the bespectacled captain's timing she'd hurried back to her Division to get her notes in order, barely managing to do so before being summoned before the sōtaichō to explain why she had failed to report Rukai's continued unauthorised absence.

The fukutaichō had been halfway through explaining that Rukia's continued absence was not unauthorised as she had reported in and was just starting to go over the circumstances that were keeping the shinigami in the human world when a messenger dashed in with a report of a Menos Grande sighting in Karakura and she was summarily dismissed. Fuming quietly, Amagurai went to get something to eat then hurried home to Ugendō. If this was the moment when the dominoes started falling then she needed to get her husband healed at up to speed as quickly as possible.

The bound kami had finalised the treatment to rejuvenate Jūshirō's damaged lung tissue several months ago, which would reverse the scarring and overcome the persistent frailty, but had hesitated to implement it. Her instincts had suggested that it wasn't time yet. Said instincts were now screaming at her to get the treatment started right now, even though her husband would be weak and bedridden to two and a half weeks while the cure ran its course, replacing his lungs in their entirety one section at a time.

Jūshirō was slightly bemused at her rather incoherent insistence that now was the right time to spend a few weeks in bed short of breath and coughing up blood, especially since it seemed very likely that Rukia would soon be up on charges for her absence, but trustingly went along with his wife's decision. Amagurai spent the next five hours breathing for him as she worked the complex reiryoku pattern into his fragile lungs and tying it into his own reserves so that it would run until every last cell had been replaced. By evening her part was done: now her husband simply had to rest patiently while the regenerative kidō worked its way through his lungs, dissolving and renewing the delicate tissues at a slow enough pace to both prevent scarring and ensure the cells were strong enough not to rupture. Jūshirō assured her that he didn't mind the wait. He had been bedridden for weeks at a time before; this would at least ensure he would never again be forced to lie in bed and cough up blood simply due to stress.

* * *

><p>Things really get moving as Aizen gets his plan in gear. In Karakura, the Menos Grande arrives... then later leaves. Amagurai on the other hand is forced to deal with rigid bureaucracy and politics.<p> 


	26. July 19th, 2001

**Month of books, day before hatsuka (July 19****th****)**

Quietly masking her frustration with politeness, Amagurai stood before the captain-commander and Kuchiki Byakuya, trying to prevent a major disaster.

"As Kuchiki Rukia's senior officer and lieutenant of the 13th Division it is my right and responsibility to retrieve her in light of the Central 46's decision to classify her actions as criminal," she said firmly yet respectfully, not giving an inch. "I have been researching in light of said officer's preliminary report and have reason to believe she has fallen victim of the machinations of the exiled former-captain Urahara. I believe it is due to said exile's interference that Kuchiki Rukia has been unable to return before now."

"If Kuchiki Rukia has indeed been associating with exiles and criminals then her sentence is well deserved," Byakuya said distantly. Amagurai smothered her urge to whack the young captain over the head with Jōdokin's shikai.

"I believe Urahara is using Kuchiki Rukia as bait," the fukutaichō tried again, this time wording herself more bluntly. "The exile was a genius and has had a long time to plan his revenge. I would rather a trap was sprung around a minor lieutenant than one of the Gotei 13's most powerful captains, especially when that captain is also head of one of the great noble houses. As a retainer of the Kuchiki clan and her senior officer, I have the authority to order and enforce Kuchiki Rukia's return. If it is indeed a trap, a superior force can be sent in to either rescue or avenge us."

"Nishi-fukutaichō's objection stands," Yamamoto-sōtaichō rumbled. "If this absence is indeed a result of Urahara Kisuke's machinations it would be foolish to take unnecessary risks. Kuchiki-taichō, your request is denied. You may however select another officer below captain rank to accompany Nishi-fukutaichō if you so desire."

Byakuya gave Amagurai a _look_. "Abarai-fukutaichō will accompany her," he said coolly.

"Very well. You are both dismissed."

* * *

><p>Abarai Renji was one of the latest crop of highly gifted shinigami to come out of the Shinō Academy. Two of his former classmates were also lieutenants and they had only been a few years behind Hisagi Shūhei, the lieutenant of 9th Division. He was also brash, hotheaded and a very hard worker. Unlike his fellow lieutenants however he knew very well that Amagurai was probably the strongest among them: he had been in 11th Division until his promotion barely a month previously and had seen her beat Ikkaku and Saitō in every single spar to date. He'd even been thrown around himself a time or two despite his superior height and weight and respected his fellow redhead greatly.<p>

"Our orders are to arrest one Kuchiki Rukia and bring her back to Soul Society for sentencing," Amagurai said after receiving a hell butterfly from Central 46, "and to if possible gain information pertaining to the actions of the exile Urahara Kisuke and his involvement in the actions of the accused."

"Who's Urahara Kisuke?" Renji asked. Amagurai never usually called the tattooed redhead by his family name, as the former Inuzuri slum rat preferred to be addressed by his personal name.

"Urahara Kisuke, former captain of 12th Division and founder of the Shinigami Research and development division," Amagurai said shortly. "Was a pioneer in gigai development and mod souls until his arrest and exile for conducting hollowification experiments on some of his fellow captains and lieutenants." She couldn't tell the entire truth as Renji was one of those completely taken in by Aizen's affable facade.

The heavily tattooed lieutenant made a face. "Evil bastard; not even Kurotsuchi-taichō would do _that_. Do Central 46 think Rukia's involved in what he's doing?"

"I doubt it. Urahara is a genius and has been deceiving older and more experienced people for longer than Rukia's been alive," Amagurai said wryly, opening the Senkaimon with her zanpakutō while their three assigned hell butterflies perched on her hairpins. Whenever she had to go through a Senkaimon the entire group's butterflies inevitably perched there; they recognised her for what she was and always clustered as close as they could. "She likely has no more idea of who he is or what he's done than you did. Urahara was likely delighted to find an injured and ignorant Kuchiki on his doorstep; just think of the possibilities."

Renji went slightly green as they both entered the Senkaimon. "So that's why you're defending her, even though she's broken the law," he muttered. "You think she's being used."

"Kuchiki Rukia got a letter to me through the member of the Stealth Forces assigned to find her after she failed to return on time a month ago," Amagurai explained as the doors closed behind them. "Her missive suggests Urahara tricked her into accepting a trapped gigai, making it physically impossible for her to return under her own power."

"You think it's a trap," Renji said flatly as the doors began reopening. "And the guy who has her powers is involved too."

"Possibly," Amagurai conceded, "Which is why we need to bring Rukia in alive if it is at all possible so as to get explanations on what occurred out of her. We also need information out of the human involved."

"So no killing Rukia at all and no killing the human until we've interrogated him," Renji deduced, "And if this Urahara shows up, we run like hell."

"_You_ run like hell with Rukia through a Senkaimon and back to Soul Society for reinforcements," Amagurai corrected him, "while I stall. But other than that, yes. Remember the human is likely to be a pawn rather than an accomplice, so do hold off on killing him until after we talk: Urahara's fukutaichō was among the victims of the hollowification experiments."

"That's sick," Renji growled as they exited the Senkaimon.

* * *

><p>Amagurai sighed, watching as Renji confronted and taunted Rukia. It hadn't taken them all that long to find her as the younger Kuchiki had not even tried to hide from them. Well, hide from Renji: Rukia had neither seen nor sensed her yet, which suggested something was seriously wrong. Amagurai wasn't trying to hide her presence beyond what she usually did while on duty. And while she disapproved of the younger fukutaichō's attitude his actions did give her the opportunity to study her officer's reiryoku patterns and soul makeup in detail.<p>

The kami in shinigami guise did not like what she was seeing at all: the gigai Rukia was in was consuming her reiryoku, using it to bind her soul ever more tightly within the false body. This had the side-effect of slowing the healing of the wound she had received before adopting the gigai, which in turn was starting to damage her ability to regenerate spirit energy; in a few more weeks her shinigami powers would have been gone forever and even now it would take at least a month to get her back up to full strength. Worse was the foreign body the gigai was using her reiryoku to bind within her soul, an object with a depressingly familiar energy pattern.

Amagurai cursed Urahara with all her heart, but did not speak the words aloud. What was it with idiot shinigami and trying to make tama?

She abandoned that line of thought as someone else entered her reduced sensory field: a spiritually aware human with the inner energy patterns of a Quincy. Amagurai had nothing against Quincy; Hollows killed by Quincy were cast out of this particular set of dimensions into the Firmament but not destroyed as Seireitei claimed they were. Souls were indestructible, a fundamental unit, though they could be wiped clean of experience and memories. The Quincy massacre had been a disgustingly pointless act of genocide which had resulted in many souls suffering needlessly in Kurotsuchi's laboratories.

Renji however had never seen a Quincy before, so he didn't know what he was looking at. Instead he attacked, swiftly incapacitating the teen then closing in for the kill.

"Abarai," Amagurai said warningly, stepping into view. "We have only one kill order. Terminating spiritually aware bystanders is not part of the Gotei 13's mission; are you that keen to be up on charges?"

The other lieutenant blanched, hastily stepping away from the wounded Quincy and bowing to her. "My apologies, Nishi-fukutaichō. It won't happen again."

"Nishi-fukutaichō?" Rukia breathed, eyes alight with desperate hope.

"I got your report, Rukia-san," Amagurai said conversationally, moving closer, "and though you are certainly in trouble I managed to convince both your brother and sōtaichō that you should not be killed on sight for consorting with exiles and criminals. In future I recommend you check with the Communication Research Section before accepting a gigai: there are dangerous and unscrupulous people out there that may take advantage of you."

Rukia blinked in puzzlement, then gasped. "Urahara-san?" she whispered in disbelief.

"Former captain of 12th Division," Renji spat, sword still dripping with the Quincy's blood. "Exiled for experimenting on his fellow shinigami and turning them into hollows."

Rukia whimpered, folding in on herself.

* * *

><p>"Oi!" What're you doing with Rukia?"<p>

Amagurai stared at the rather rude human soul with orange hair clad in shikahushō as Renji turned his considerable anger on a legitimate target. The teenage boy was using the power he'd gained from Rukia as a catalyst to grant him access to his own monstrous reserves. As she had suspected from Rukia's statement that the boy's powers had clouded her senses, his mostly locked powers were comparable to those of Zaraki Kenpachi. However he was completely ignorant of the possibility of shikai and had no idea of what a zanpakutō actually was, as evidenced by his reaction when Renji asked his sword's name. Amagurai was impressed that Rukia had managed to keep that much from him and irritated that the tattooed hothead had made those efforts at secrecy worthless.

This boy's usage of Rukia's reserves meant they acted as both a crutch and a muffler, likely making it completely impossible to hear the voice of his blade's spirit.

Then Rukia jumped Renji and attempted to get the mortal boy to run away. Amagurai could have told her subordinate not to bother; this Kurosaki Ichigo was not the type to run away. He probably couldn't even get his head around the concept of a strategic retreat. In fact, Rukia's entry into the combat zone just caused him to pull on more of his own power and lash out at Renji, summoning an energy wave that blasted the lieutenant backwards and shattered his sunglasses.

Deciding that enough was enough, Amagurai drew her own zanpakutō and used Senka to get behind the orange haired boy and sealed his saketsu and hakusui in a single swift strike. "Kurosaki Ichigo, you know nothing of shinigami," she said calmly as the teen toppled forwards onto the road. "Not even enough to understand the depth of your own ignorance. Rukia, come here."

"Hai, fukutaichō," the girl murmured unhappily, moving closer though her eyes never left the crumpled and dying form of the human she had given her powers to.

"Your gigai is consuming your spiritual pressure and aggravating your injuries. In order to remove you from it I will have to destroy it," Amagurai said matter-of-factly, "so please do not resist me. I do not want you to die. Renji, please stand behind her. She'll be weak and drained once I've removed her."

"Hai, Nishi-fukutaichō," the crimson haired shinigami agreed stiffly, deliberately ignoring his bleeding scalp wound and destroyed goggles. Amagurai focused on where the flawed tama was within the gigai, impeding the flow of reiryoku through Rukia's saketsu, drew her zanpakutō once more and lunged, striking as precisely as a surgeon. There was a flash, a cry of pain and Renji was left desperately clutching Rukia's soul form as he tried to stem the flow of blood from the gaping wound right through her sternum. The gigai had exploded under the pressure, body parts strewn all over the road.

"Rukia! Leave-"

Amazingly it seemed Kurosaki Ichigo was still mostly alive and actually conscious. Amagurai ignored his outbust and sidestepped his attempt to grab her foot as she flash-stepped over to her mortally wounded officer, both hands glowing vibrant green. "Renji, hold her still."

He did so, face pale and panicky. He clearly had not expected this to happen. Amagurai had; she was just grateful that, unlike Hisana, Rukia very much wanted to go on living. It made healing her much easier and granted her the opportunity to pour a considerable amount of regenerative power into the young shinigami's injuries.

* * *

><p>Several tense minutes later Rukia's soul form was healed enough that recovering at her own pace would be better for her in the long run and thoroughly bandaged. Renji clutched his unconscious friend closer protectively, eyes flicking around in search of hostile parties, as Amagurai turned her attention to the dying human, who had pulled himself to his knees and was looking a little confused. Probably because he hadn't been expecting her to heal Rukia.<p>

"You are Kurosaki Ichigo, are you not?" she said briskly, moving to stand next to him and forcing him back down to the ground whilst healing him just enough to postpone death for another half an hour.

"Yeah. So?" the boy gasped, defiant to the last.

"Is your father's name Isshin?"

The boy's eyes widened. "You know Goat-face? How the _hell_ do you-"

That was confirmation enough. "Do you know an Urahara Kisuke?"

"Mr Hat-and-Clogs? Yeah."

Interesting nickname. "How long have you known him?"

"I met him a bit after Rukia bought some soul candy from his shop," the teen said grudgingly. "He's an ass."

Which meant Kurosaki Ichigo was more likely to be an unwitting tool than an accomplice. "Tell me about this shop and everything else that occurred after you first saw Rukia."

Ichigo talked, eyes flicking between the now semi-conscious but still weak and incoherent Rukia cradled in Renji's arms and Amagurai herself. The older lieutenant occasionally asked for clarification or more detail, which the dying human supplied almost reflexively, often scowling when he realised what he'd given away. The brash boy clearly hadn't been expecting a competent female authority figure who was third scariest on 11th Division's unofficial list of intimidating women just beneath Unohana-taichō and Kusajishi-fukutaichō. Out of an interest in maintaining cooperation Amagurai deliberately avoided asking questions about Kurosaki Ichigo's siblings or those of his friends who had not been directly involved in his escapades.

Amagurai learned a lot in the next quarter of an hour. Mainly that Ichigo and his friends had been supported in their death-defying misadventures by the flawed tama, which had responded to their panic and desperation by twisting events their way just far enough to ensure their survival. She also discovered that Urahara Kisuke owned a shop in Karakura –she even got the address– with the original name of 'Urahara Shoten'. He ran it with a large dark-skinned man named Tessai, who matched her memories of the also exiled former captain of the Kidō Corps. The two children Ururu and Ginta sounded like sensitive humans and probably would not be interesting to Soul Society except that they likely had a good idea of their two carers recent activities.

* * *

><p>"Thank-you," Amagurai said once the orange haired boy ran out of words. "I take it the boy in glasses over there is Ishida Uryu?" Kurosaki Ichigo had mentioned his friend a lot but had made it sound like the boy was just another sensitive rather than a Quincy. Amagurai admired that kind of loyalty and had let it slide. However the Quincy, who had been quietly bleeding out for the past twenty minutes, was now approaching critical condition and his energy levels were fluctuating weakly.<p>

"Ishida?" The human twisted to get a better look. "Ishida! Uryu!" His voice gradually became more urgent and desperate as the Quincy did not answer. Amagurai had met an Ishida during the massacre; presumably this was his son.

"I could heal him enough that he won't die of his injuries but it will cost you, Kurosaki Ichigo," Amagurai said mildly, well aware that the orange haired boy had only about fifteen minutes left to live and the Quincy had barely four.

Ichigo looked up to meet her eyes. "I'll give you anything, please!" he begged, gaze darting from his dying friend to Rukia and back to her again.

"Anything, hm?" Amagurai repeated with a faint smile; she was kami and declarations like that gave her real power over people and situations. That promise gave her _leverage_. "Very well." Sheathing her zanpakutō she walked over to the Quincy, hand luminous green once more as she cast a powerful healing kidō. This boy had almost as strong a will to live as the young Kurosaki himself.

"Oh, and please let Urahara know that he will pay dearly for using one of my subordinates as a pawn in his schemes," she said clearly as she rose to her feet and walked back over to Renji and the still very out of it Rukia. "I dislike those who choose to play games with the lives of those in their care." With that she took Rukia off Renji and cradled the girl in her arms, one palm over the still-vulnerable area in the centre of the young Kuchiki's chest. "Renji, the Senkaimon."

"Hai, Nishi-fukutaichō,"Renji said automatically, mind likely taken up by what he'd heard said that evening as he raised his zanpakutō. He paused. "What about..?"

"Omnitsukidō is out correcting people's memories and Kurosaki will be dead in less than five minutes," Amagurai said calmly as the orange-haired boy struggled to keep his eyes open, now completely unable to move. She deliberately ignored the Quincy, who was only pretending to be unconscious and listening avidly. "He can no longer access Rukia's powers and is stuck in soul form a long way from his body. Let's leave. Rukia needs to be looked over by a real medic and placed in Division custody."

As the doors of the Senkaimon closed behind them Amagurai took note of the approach of a distinct reiryoku signature from the shadows. It seemed Shihōin Yoruichi was somehow involved in this mess alongside Urahara and Tessai. How interesting.

* * *

><p>A whole lot of minor changes:<p>

Renji is still very cross with Ichigo, considering him to be responsible for Rukia's injury and sentence.

Ichigo knows there's something funny going on with Urahara and his father, though he'll forget the latter point for now. He also owes Amagurai the unspecified 'anything' he promised her, which gives her considerable more scope in planning her actions: he agreed to owe her enough that she can now interfere at her discretion if his life is at risk.

Ishida also knows that Urahara is to blame in some way for Rukia's condition, which will make him very suspicious of Mr Hat-and-Clogs.

Amagurai now knows one side of the story covering the entire 'Agent of the Shinigami' arc, minus what Ichigo managed to edit out. Such as Kon.


	27. July 21st, 2001

For Illulian, my most faithful reviewer.

**Month of books, day after hitsuka (July 21****st****)**

Amagurai entered 13th Division's detention cells to the melodious sound of angry shouting. Renji had come to visit and it was clear Rukia had successfully gotten under his skin about something. While it was good to hear her officer had got a little of her fire back Amagurai did not approve of the language being used at all. Sangohō was exploring around here somewhere and didn't need to hear that sort of thing at her age.

"Abarai-fukutaichō, what a pleasant surprise," she said dryly as she materialised right behind her young colleague, making him start violently. "Please moderate your language however: Ukitake-taichō's youngest is visiting the Division today."

"H-h-hai!" Judging by Renji's expression, Amagurai had succeeded in channelling Unohana-taichō. "M-my apologies, Nishi-fukutaichō!" he stuttered.

"Amagurai, please: we are colleagues now after all," Amagurai said with a smile.

"Of course, Amagurai-fukutaichō!" Renji managed before making good his escape.

The lieutenant chuckled quietly once the brash young man was out of earshot. "How are you doing now, Rukia?"

"Much better, thank-you, Nishi-fukutaichō," the imprisoned shinigami replied quietly, reflexively rubbing her chest with one hand. The wound was altogether gone now as if it had never been, but the damage to her Soul Sleep, the source of her spiritual powers, meant that she would not even be able to even hear her zanpakutō for another two weeks. A full recovery would take a month, by which point Rukia would have to train very hard to get herself back up to full strength after such a long convalescence.

* * *

><p>Rukia couldn't actually remember any of what had happened between being forced out of the gigai and waking up a day and a half later in one of 13th Division's cells. She believed Kurosaki Ichigo was dead, as he had appeared so at that point, and felt very guilty about it. Amagurai had not corrected that assumption, as it was likely that the young Kurosaki <em>was<em> dead, considering his injuries. However her experience of Urahara told her that the sheer unlikelihood of the boy's survival made it rather plausible that the former captain had somehow engineered it.

Not that Amagurai was feeling at all friendly towards the irresponsible scientist at this point in time: she had spent the entire time Rukia was unconscious sitting at the girl's bedside, both assisting in her healing and purifying the shell that had concealed the tama which was still embedded in her officer's soul. Knowing that Aizen was likely after this soul jewel as well, the bound kami had spun a complex illusion inside the faceted globe that gave the appearance and feel of a corrupt soul gem with none of the substance. No being that lacked experience of the Pure World beyond the dimensional boundaries would ever be able to tell the difference.

Amagurai had finally taken a few hours off after Rukia awoke, using them to quietly slip into the Dangai to purify the tama she had removed from Rukia's soul. Her officer's care was now the responsibility of Yamada Hanatarō, who had been dispatched from 4th Division to see that the prisoner was fed and her cell kept clean. The tama was now concealed on Amagurai's person, well out of reach of greedy and irresponsible shinigami.

* * *

><p>"Nishi-fukutaichō." Amagurai turned around: it was Byakuya, looking as calm and remote as a marble statue. Amagurai however could see the well-hidden unease in his stance without too much difficulty.<p>

"Kuchiki-taichō," she acknowledged, wondering why Renji was now lurking just around the corner.

"The Central 46 have decided that for her crimes Kuchiki Rukia will be executed by the Sōkyoku in twenty five days' time," the 6th Division captain said.

Amagurai froze. That was wrong. Not quite illegal, but definitely out on the very edge of dubious. A noble –even an adopted one– who was recognised as having been manipulated and placed at risk by a convicted criminal should have gotten off with a suspension or a short prison sentence at the very worst. Even Urahara hadn't been sentenced to the Sōkyoku and he had been believed to have turned his colleagues into Hollows!

She was about to protest the sheer outrageousness of the sentence when she caught Byakuya's eye and realised he wasn't protesting. He wanted to, but he wasn't going to do a thing about it. Amagurai silently cursed the Kuchiki clan's stiff-necked, sour-faced elders and their obsession with legality. This was all their fault, accusing Sōjun's powerful yet very sensitive son of dragging the Kuchiki name through the mud with his choices. Poor Byakuya was unhappy enough already without the extra pressure on him. He still couldn't even bring himself to look Rukia in the eye when he spoke to her and his promises were pulling him in all different directions.

"Onī-sama?" Rukia whispered, stunned and horrified at the news. Amagurai doubted her subordinate knew her brother's moods and mannerisms well enough to spot the slight guilt flinch before the 6th Division captain swept out of the cell block.

"Execution?" Renji repeated in shock, stepping into sight and staring after his captain. "But, but-"

"Rest assured I will be protesting. Loudly," Amagurai said grimly. "The Sōkyoku is customarily reserved as a punishment of last resort for capital crimes and what Rukia has done barely qualifies as a felony. Somebody is trying to murder my officer." Her eyes narrowed dangerously, Jōdokin and Tenin'yoshō for once in perfect accord that something had to be done. Right now. "_Nobody_ threatens my officers." She swept out of the cell block and made a beeline for 1st Division: she intended to give the captain-commander a piece of her mind and a severe legal headache. Unlike most of the Gotei 13 she knew Soul Society's laws inside out and this was a perversion of the system that she intended to fight with all she had.

* * *

><p>The saketsu -binding chain- is where a Pluses' soul chain is and is important in regulating spiritual power. Shinigami also have the hakusui, which is the source of their spiritual powers. The hōgyoku disrupted Rukia's access to both, making it very hard to call on her powers. As she was injured at the time, it also put back her recovery by a lot.<p>

Renji doesn't know this, and will go on blaming Ichigo for Rukia's apparent lack of power.

I noticed that Urahara wasn't sentenced to be executed despite his far more serious crimes. This suggests that Execution is for situations _more severe_ that experimenting on multiple captains and lieutenants. What Rukia did certainly doesn't make the grade. Seriously, what a mess.


	28. August 1st, 2001

For Shunkaida BySaJu Yukish and EVA-Saiyajin, my other reviewers. To the rest of you readers, feedback is love!

**Month of falling leaves, month beginning (August 1****st****)**

Though Amagurai succeeded in giving the sōtaichō a headache to the point that he very soon banned her from entering any area of 1st Division other than the lieutenants' meeting room unless summoned directly, she did not succeed in appealing against Rukia's sentence. 13th Division was under a cloud as the news got out and all the officers took care to stay out of Amagurai's way as she stormed about her various duties, face blank and reiatsu roiling. It was a serious effort keeping both her zanpakutō under wraps when they were pulling in the same direction and she was unusually short with everyone except her children and husband.

She also vanished completely several times in the week after being banned from First, donning her hitokiri garb and hunting down criminals and Hollows in Rukongai to blow off steam. She deliberately did not take herself to Eleventh: losing control at this point in time would have serious consequences.

In between her bouts of fury and depression Amagurai spent time with her youngest daughter, helped her son Saichō with his hohō training and spent a few hours here and there listening to Nihyōko ranting about the Shinō Academy and how all the girls were obsessed with Aizen-taichō.

"It's pathetic! He's polite and smiles at them and they all fall over each-other swooning at how wonderful he is!" the young redhead complained. "I'm avoiding Calligraphy class completely just so I don't choke on the sickly sweetness of it all! Besides, he smells... off."

While personally relieved that her headstrong and powerful daughter would not be joining the Cult of Aizen, Amagurai recommended that Nihyōko keep her opinion to herself but agreed that, if the captain made her uncomfortable, missing the elective he taught was perfectly acceptable.

"Your calligraphy is already excellent, Nihyōko-chan," she said, hugging the kitsune who had brought so much joy into her life, "so don't worry about your education suffering."

* * *

><p>When the time came for Rukia to be escorted to the Senzaikyū Renji and the robed Omnitsukidō guards were met by a stony-faced 13th Division fukutaichō in full formal garb who did not speak a single word and made them all deeply uncomfortable with her oppressive and subtly malicious spiritual pressure. Amagurai could sense their profound unease and was grimly pleased by it; they were assisting and enabling a perversion of the course of justice. Tenin'yoshō was muttering murderously in the back of her mind, pleading for the chance to strike them down in protection of the innocent: she didn't have to do it in public, a strike from behind and above at the dead of night would be enough. Even Jōdokin did not protest the suggestion: this farce was a smear on her honour, that of her Division and that of the Kuchiki clan.<p>

The bound kami held back despite agreeing with her blades; any illegal behaviour could only take place where official parties couldn't see it and in the presence of a plausible alibi. Or at least carried out in such a way that she would never even be suspected.

An alter ego was such a handy thing to have.

A plan bubbling happily in the back of her mind, Amagurai kept her face blank and disapproving as Rukia left with Renji and the guards. This had to be part of Aizen's cunning plan, which meant Gin had been warning her about this –among other things– when she met him near the entrance to Central 46. Which meant that it was Aizen who was trying to obliterate Rukia's soul, probably in pursuit of the tama he thought she had.

Which meant the execution was partly Urahara's fault, damn him.

Amagurai briskly headed off towards Ugendō, utterly creeping out the shinigami she passed with her happy humming and vicious smirk. It looked like she would get her chance to kill Tōsen sooner rather than later.

* * *

><p>The situation escalates and Amagurai struggles to keep her cool.<p> 


	29. August 3rd, 2001

**Month of falling leaves, four days to the beginning of autumn (August 3****rd****)**

The captain and lieutenants' meeting was unexpected; perhaps though it should not have been, Amagurai reflected as she hurried towards the central meeting room before the sun had fully risen into the sky. It seemed a few days previously some ryoka had used an illicit Senkaimon to get into Rukongai and had tried to enter Seireitei through the West Gate. They would have succeeded too, had Gin not conveniently been there and severed one of Jidanbō the Gatekeeper's arms so the giant could not hold the gate open.

The description of the ryōka included one who had challenged Gin directly: an orange-haired boy in shihakushō with a sword as long as he was tall.

Kurosaki Ichigo.

Amagurai entered the lieutenants' room, glancing around. It was only half full; she wasn't late, thank goodness.

"Amagurai-san!" Renji called out from across the room. "D'you think it's him?"

The bound kami grinned, remembering the human teen's reiryoku patterns and temperament. "I'd bet on it, Renji-kun," she replied sweetly. "He reminds me of a few other shinigami of my acquaintance. Some people just don't know when to quit." She did not mention that she _knew _the younger Kurosaki was somewhere in Soul Society; debts were such handy things and few people even in Soul Society remembered how dangerous they could be.

"Amagurai-san? Have you seen Aizen-taichō?" Hinamori asked shyly. The redhead smiled at the younger and rather naive lieutenant:

"I'm the wrong person to ask, Hinamori-kun," she said wryly. "I somehow always miss Aizen-taichō. I don't think I've seen him in over a year!"

This got a laugh out of the gathered lieutenants: her inexplicable inability to be within several buildings of the 5th Division captain was a source of much hilarity in certain circles and there was money riding on when they would next both be visible at the same time.

"I heard you got banned from 1st Division, Amagurai-san," Matsumoto said, eyes sparkling with mirth. "How did you manage that?"

I would be a very poor fukutaichō if I did not attempt to protect one of the officers under my command from an unfair sentencing," Amagurai said coolly, "especially when Ukitake-taichō is in no condition to do it himself."

"Your loyalty does you credit, Nishi-san," Sasakibe-fukutaichō of 1st Division said, ever calm and conciliatory, "though your persistence in the face of the inevitable is somewhat taxing."

That got a few chuckles. Amagurai smiled, sharp as a fistful of blades:

"Why, Sasakibe-san, I would do no less for any of my colleagues, should it prove necessary."

"Thanks, Fire-head-chan!" chirped Yachiru. "I'll tell Ken-chan you offered!"

That effectively killed the tension and the conversation turned to less serious matters. Then the alarm sounded.

"Intruders?" wondered Kira Izuru of 3rd Division.

"How?" breathed Kotetsu Ise of Fourth.

Yachiru didn't say a word, dashing out of the door in an instant. Doubtless she intended to join her captain, who would certainly be hunting down these new challenges for a good fight. The rest of the lieutenants followed her, stopping in the courtyard to try and see which direction the intruders were coming from. Amagurai didn't bother: direction was ultimately unimportant as each Division had a specific area of Seireitei they were responsible for. Instead she flash-stepped back to Thirteenth as fast as she could to issue orders.

She arrived back at her Division's headquarters in time to witness her officers performing what looked like a not very synchronised headless chicken dance.

"Atten-shun!" she bellowed.

Everyone froze, some half-dressed, others unarmed or with food stuffed in their mouths.

"Squads, you have three minutes to be fully prepared and at your stations! Squad leaders, to me!" she barked. Chaos resumed, slightly more purposeful this time. The squad leaders swiftly lined up in front of her, not one of them in full uniform.

"Third seat Kotsubaki, your squad will report to taichō to defend the residential area and respond to orders from sōtaichō or the Central 46. Third seat Kotetsu, you will take your squad and squads three to seven to conduct a thorough search in our Division's patrol area for the ryoka. At least one of them is almost lieutenant level, so take care! Squads eight and nine will remain here to guard the Division, provide relief and respond to sightings. Understood?"

"Hai, fukutaichō!" The squad leaders chorused.

"Then get moving!" Amagurai ordered. A blur of shunpo later she was alone, so she headed to the office to get started on the paperwork. Ten minutes later the eighth and ninth seats, leaders of the eighth and ninth squads, entered her office, now armed and properly dressed.

"I will be out on my own," she informed then briskly as she neatly stacked a pile of paperwork. "I'm stronger than any of the ryoka and my reiryoku sensing talent should help me trace them. Remember that we don't know why they're here, so don't get complacent."

* * *

><p>Amagurai deliberately ignored the reiatsu spikes around the 11th Division: while that presence was definitely Kurosaki Ichigo, she was more interested in the other members of the invasion group, specifically those of the boy's friends she had only heard about. The individual blowing holes through walls somewhere near 6th Division was specifically who she was chasing, though she was not exactly putting a whole lot of effort into it.<p>

Whoever it was moved pretty quickly: she traced the peculiar energy signature from the landing site and halfway across Seireitei, past numerous unconscious squads and through any number of ruined buildings and after several hours was closing in on those odd flashes that were definitely not kidō. However at that moment she received a summons to another lieutenants' meeting.

Sighing and fixing in her mind the direction the ryoka was travelling in –directly towards the Senzaikyū– Amagurai set her sights on the lofty roofs of 1st Division and vanished in a blur of shunpo.

The purpose of the meeting turned out to be just a damage report. Ikkaku and Yumichika had been defeated by the ryoka they encountered, indicating the enemy either possessed considerable strength or enough cunning to outfox Seireitei's most hardened fighters. Considering that the ryoka had pretty much flattened 11th Division Amagurai was leaning towards the former. The individual she had been following had certainly blasted through a number of patrols with apparent ease. She also wondered what Saitō was up to; the ryoka would not have survived encountering him, which suggested he was maintaining a suspiciously low profile.

As her fellow lieutenants gasped in horror and muttered in dismay, the third seat of 4th Division continued his report: three ryoka had been identified, two of whom had taken a hostage. Those two had also vanished from Seireitei's collective senses, which was unusual and unnerving. At least, it was to people who failed to take into account that the sewer system was shielded, which included everyone not in 4th Division and everyone in the Division who hadn't paid attention to that little titbit. Amagurai knew because she'd taken advantage of that fact to do shikai practice down there for several months before Unohana-taichō noticed the change in the sealed form of her blade.

While near her Iba Tetsuzaemon worried that one of his men had not reported in and someone else bemoaned the lack of real information, Amagurai noticed Renji slipping out of the back door. Curious but not really concerned –Renji after all had a very good idea of why the ryoka were here at all– the bound kami instead stepped forward to referee the argument brewing between Matsumoto and Ōmaeda. Abarai could handle himself.

* * *

><p>As late afternoon slid into evening Amagurai returned to 13th Division and the paperwork she had been neglecting. With Jūshirō still out of the picture for another two or three days she had to stay on top of both his workload and her own. However around sunset she became aware of Renji's spiritual pressure: he was fighting someone all-out. Hopping up onto the roof, Amagurai realised his opponent was Kurosaki Ichigo. And, judging by that last spike, the human had just won.<p>

Curious as to what had led the tattooed lieutenant to disregard his orders and hunt down the intruder by himself, Amagurai quickly tidied her office and left in the direction of 6th Division, stopping by at home in passing to let her husband know all was well and dismissing the shinigami still hanging around to rest for the night.

Considering who his captain was and how on edge Byakuya was at the moment, Renji's stunt would probably get him into trouble.

* * *

><p>The first day of the invasion. Why the fourth seat of the 11th Division is nowhere to be found is a point I will return to later. What do people think of Yachiru's nicknaming skills?<p>

As for the headless chicken dance, I'm sure my readers have seen it before: does running around at random and panicking ring a bell?


	30. August 4th, 2001

**Month of falling leaves, three days to the beginning of autumn (August 4****th****) **

It was only slightly past midnight when, from her hiding place in the rafters of the 6th Division cell block where Renji had been placed by his disgruntled captain, Amagurai heard of the change in circumstances ordered by the captain-commander. A shinigami arrived to tell Hinamori, who was sitting with Renji, that the Gotei 13 were now officially on war footing with permission to fully release zanpakutō if necessary.

Amagurai didn't like it. She'd had a brief chat with Gin while Kira and Hinamori were being terrorised by a very on-edge Kuchiki Byakuya and the kitsune had confirmed that the games were only just beginning. Overhearing Hitsugaia-taichō only a few minutes later confirmed that Gin was getting a kick out of messing with his colleagues' heads. Natural behaviour for a fox, but considerably less than pleasant for the unfortunates caught in the crossfire.

The bound kami resolved then and there to help pick up the pieces once Hinamori inevitably discovered that the man she idolised was considerably less noble than his image portrayed him to be and to buy Matsumoto enough alcohol to numb the pain for a few days once she discovered part of what her oldest friend was getting up to.

After Hinamori left for her own Division Amagurai dropped from the rafters as silently as a puff of air. Her time in 4th Division may have been over a century ago but reiryoku boosting and speeding up the healing process had always been what she was best at. In her squad the other shinigami had done the fiddly precision work of putting all the pieces back in the right places then passed the patients on to her to complete the healing. Renji's soul form would be fully mended by morning and his energy reserves would be completely replenished within twenty four hours. Gin may well have been playing on Aizen's side of the board for now but that didn't mean she couldn't stack the deck a little in favour of the other side.

* * *

><p>At dawn Amagurai returned to Ugendō for a quick wash and change of clothing, ate breakfast with Sangohō and Jūshirō then hurried off to the lieutenants' meeting. There likely wouldn't be many people showing up on time after the chaos of the previous day, but she had to set a good example.<p>

She was waiting patiently with Matsumoto, Kira, Hisagi and Iba when they heard a scream.

"Hinamori!" Kira gasped, dashing from the room in the direction of the 1st Division's east wall. Amagurai followed, slightly puzzled. She'd come that way less than fifteen minutes earlier; there wasn't anything on the east wall to merit that kind of distress.

It turned out there was, in fact, something distressing on the east wall: Aizen, impaled on his own zanpakutō. At least, that was what it looked like. Amagurai had spent centuries in previous lifetimes around more talented and experienced illusionists than whoever was trying to fake the 5th Division captain's death. She did not however bring up the illusory quality of the corpse to her comrades: it wasn't actively hurting anyone and if the responsible party realised their abilities were useless against her she and those she cared about would become targets.

Safer by far would be to watch this pan out from the sidelines and wait for the perfect moment to strike.

One thing was certain though: Kurosaki and his friends were not responsible for this little farce. It was too sadistic, too carefully staged. From what she had seen and heard, the ryoka were a little rough around the edges but they weren't cruel and they didn't kill. She had checked: while 1th Division would be hurting for a while and the arrogant so-called 'Kamaitachi' that was Jidanbō of Sixth had lost his powers for good, they were all still alive.

As Hinamori, clearly in shock, tottered closer to the wall where the body was pinned like a butterfly, Amagurai quickly stepped forward and wrapped a comforting arm around the little lieutenant's shoulders. She let the younger girl scream; there wasn't really any other comfort she could honestly offer.

"What's all this racket so early in the morning?"

Amagurai winced as Hinamori stiffened. Gin being deliberately cruel like that meant only one thing: he was playing one of his games. Gin's games involved pushing peoples' buttons with inhuman accuracy until they cracked, then clinically demonstrating the perils of losing your temper. He knew better than to play with her, even her Amagurai-self that he was yet to connect to Satsu the hitokiri, but everyone else was fair game.

And he'd never been allowed to goad Hinamori before because she was Aizen's little pet.

"Oh, this is a terrible situation, isn't it?" Gin went on insincerely in insufferably cheery tones as the gathered fukutaichōs all turned to stare at him.

Amagurai locked eyes with the fox-faced captain. "Ichimaru-taichō," she said respectfully, slightly loosening her grip on Hinamori as she allowed a little of her true aura to surface. Her colleagues didn't notice –their energy sensing abilities were nowhere near sensitive enough– but Gin did and his smirk widened into a massive grin as his brilliant mind finally pulled together all the pieces and he understood exactly the nature of the game being played and the various pieces on the board.

"So it was you!" Hinamori screeched, darting out if Amagurai's loosened grasp and lunging at the grinning captain, drawing her zanpakutō as she did so. Gin made no move to defend himself but the 3rd Division lieutenant, Kira Izuru, swiftly moved to intercept and parried the grieving girl's blow.

Gin then smirked at Hinamori and turned to saunter away, provoking the girl to slide further over the edge and try to force her blond friend and fellow lieutenant aside. When that failed she started shouting at Kira and he unwisely allowed himself to be goaded into shouting back. The fox avatar did not go far and paused just out of reach, enjoying the chaos. Amagurai quietly drew and released her zanpakutō, keeping the tessen hidden between the folds of her uniform; Jōdokin's blunt side had broken up any number of fights and subdued numerous hot-headed and unruly subordinates. A quick blow to the back of the head would prevent the fukutaichō of 5th Division from embarrassing herself further.

Amagurai was slightly too late to prevent complications: Hinamori had called on her shikai and lunged at Gin. The bound kami acted at once, blurring to behind the much younger girl and landing a solid blow to the back of her head just as Kira called upon his own shikai to defend himself. The hysterical fukutaichō dropped like a puppet with the strings cut, forcing the 3rd Division lieutenant to abort his attack or risk hitting Amagurai as well.

"Arrest the both of them," came Hitsugaya-taichō's cool voice. Hisagi Shūhei and Iba Tetsuzaemon instantly seized Kira as Amagurai quickly checked Hinamori for complications. You could never be too careful with head injuries. It seemed however that the young lieutenant would be waking up in an hour or so none the worse for her unplanned unconsciousness.

"This is no time to be fighting amongst ourselves," the short captain said angrily, frowning blackly at Kira who, as the only one still conscious of the guilty parties, drew the entirety of the icy genius' ire.

Amagurai handed her limp burden over to Matsmoto. "My zanpakutō is earth natured, Hitsugaya-taichō," she murmured, bowing politely to the young captain. "I can remove the body and transport it to 4th Division without disturbing the scene."

"Do so; I will report to sōtaichō. The rest of you escort those two away and place them in detention in their respective Divisions," the captain of the 10th Division said briskly.

Jōdokin's abilities being what they were made retrieving the false body pinned to the wall right under the roof fairly simple: a flick of the wrist and a twist of her fan later the wall was just fluid enough for the sword to slide out and fall. Amagurai caught it with little difficulty, taking care to accommodate for the energy patterns the blade was emitting to maintain the illusory corpse. She had to hand it to whoever had done this: it was a pretty good scam. Considerably less easy was pretending she couldn't hear Gin playing his young colleague like a violin, though Hitsugaya likely believed he was in control of the conversation. The arrival of some 1st Division officers was a welcome reprise, as Hitsugaya ordered them to escort her to 4th Division with the body. Well, what everyone except her thought was a body anyway.

* * *

><p>After delivering the faux corpse to Unohana-tachō Amagurai wandered around the Division looking for people she knew who had been injured. After a little careful searching she located Ikkaku and Yumichika in one of the Relief Centre's small courtyards.<p>

"Taichō's fighting that Ichigo guy," Yumichika told her as she stepped out into the enclosed garden.

Amagurai tilted her head on one side and reached out with her spiritual sense. "Hn. So he is. It seems I was right after all then."

"What do you mean, Nishi-fukutaichō?" Ikkaku asked warily.

Amagurai smiled. "when I met that boy in the human world I sensed he had enough potential power to rival Zaraki-taichō, provided he was goaded into fighting with his whole heart. It's good to see that I haven't lost my touch."

"Taichō will win though," Yumichika said.

"Don't count on it," Amagurai said absently, most of her mind on the distant fight taking place near 1st Division.

"Why d'you say that? Zaraki-taichō is unbeatable," Ikkaku said suspiciously.

"While Kurosaki Ichigo may not quite equal Zaraki Kenpachi in raw power and is nowhere near his level in pure bloodthirstiness, he does know the name of his zanpakutō," the 13th Division fukutaichō said calmly. Named zanpakutō felt different and Ichigo's had that feel, though he certainly hadn't plumbed the depths of what his weapon was capable of yet. "Your taichō has never bothered to learn his weapon's name. Two shinigami with almost equal power, one who knows his blade against one who does not. Who will win?"

Yumichika went an unflattering shade of off-white. "You don't think..." he trailed off nervously.

Amagurai bowed her head. "I do indeed. And I intent to find out in person." She grinned. "I've always kinda wanted to fight Zaraki-taichō for myself, you know, but I never felt like dealing with the hassle I'd get once people realised I was captain level. It just might be worth it now though."

"You- you-" Ikkaku stuttered, gaping like a fish.

"I played you?" Amagurai suggested, eyes gleaming. "Ikkaku, I know you played me, too; I have a very good grasp of sensing relative power levels. Besides, the only person in Soul Society I haven't deceived in one way or another is the one I'm married to." She left in a blur of shunpo, headed for the centre of the reiatsu shockwaves shaking Seireitei.

Even with her considerable speed Amagurai arrived too late to catch the end of the fight, finding instead a whole lot of rubble, a crater and enough lost blood to kill a fully grown adult nearly twice over. Kusajishi-fukutaichō's wails alerted her to the 11th Division captain's location and on reaching it the redhead was jumped by a frantic little girl in uniform with tears brimming in her eyes.

Zaraki Kenpachi, don't you _dare_ die on me," Amagurai muttered as she sealed wounds, stimulated bone marrow and poured as much reiryoku into the massive captain's depleted reserves as she could spare. "I've been hiding my potential all my life and have finally decided to come clean, with you and your lunatic squad at least. Do you hear me in there? I'm way stronger than I've ever let on, maybe even stronger than you are and I've never brought my full strength to bear against anyone, ever." She reached into her battered and by now rather depleted emergency pack and started bandaging over the wounds she'd closed, taking care not to rupture the still fragile tissues.

"For real, Fire-head-fukutaichō?" Yachiru asked, wide eyed. "You're really that strong?"

Amagurai grinned down at the petite lieutenant. "I've been captain level for more than half a century, Yachiru-chan, and I could have given sōtaichō a run for his money even before then if I'd ever seen the need. I don't like killing people though, so I hide it. But once the mess with the ryoka is all over and done with I would be happy to go a few rounds with Kenpachi-san. Just for fun, you understand; no killing."

Yachiru managed a smile. "He'd like that. He really liked fighting Strawberry-san and he's been bored for ages before that."

Amagurai smiled back encouragingly. "Do you think he'd cheer up if I threw him around like I did to Renji last time I visited?"

The pink haired lieutenant giggled. "Funny Fire-head! Nobody can through Ken-chan around like that! I'll tell him you promised though, so don't forget!"

"I won't," Amagurai agreed as she pulled off her gloves, then froze. True, if her projections had been accurate Jūshirō should indeed be healthy again by now, if rather underpowered. But what on earth was her husband doing up near the shrine of penitence?

"Zaraki-taichō should be fine now, though I suggest you wait until Unohana confirms it to go back to your Division," she told Yachiru as she quickly repacked her bag and rose to her feet. "I'll come by Eleventh next week for the fight."

"See you soon, Fire-head-chan!" Yachiru called after her.

* * *

><p>Once again Amagurai arrived too late to join in the fight but just in time to help with the cleanup. The penitence cell was open and Rukia was standing just outside it with Jūshirō and a very nervous Yamada Hanatarō, facing Byakuya while sprawled on the bridge was a stranger with severe wounds that could only have come from Senbonzakura. She sighed.<p>

"Kuchiki-taichō, it is unbecoming of a head of one of the great clans to blast those who in one way or another manage to irritate you."

It was barely visible, but Byakuya twitched. "He is of the Shiba clan," her onetime student intoned coolly. "To offer less than my full power would have been an insult."

Amagurai gave the shredded stranger another once-over. "A Shiba? So this is Shiba Ganju-san then? Goodness he's grown since I last saw him."

"You know him?" Jūshirō asked, surprised.

"I only met him once, while I was clearing up a misunderstanding after Shiba-fukutaichō's demise." She paused, crouched over the unconscious young man with hands glowing green. "He'll live and, if I know Shibas, will be complaining something terrible in a day or so about getting pasted by such a pretty boy noble."

Byakuya twitched again, more visibly this time, as Rukia and the timid Yamada looked horrified and Jūshirō tried in vain to hide a smile.

"And since you appear to be so much better, Ukitake-taichō, you can get the rest of the paperwork done when you return to the Division," Amagurai added thoughtfully. "There is quite a lot I am not permitted to sign, after all." Her captain's eyes widened like a startled rabbit at the prospect.

"How can you be so, so familiar?" Rukia burst out.

Amagurai raised an eyebrow. "I've known Ukitake-taichō for almost two centuries, Rukia-san, and I was close to Kuchiki-taichō's father. A certain amount of familiarity is expected under such circumstances." She smiled, getting to her feet. "I was even Kuchiki-taichō's sensei before he joined 6th Division. It is not appropriate that I be overly formal with a young man I spent over twenty five years beating black and blue in spars six times a week."

Byakuya now had a muscle twitching slightly in his cheek and his face was set in an icy mask. He was also leaking reiatsu in a rather menacing fashion. Amagurai ignored the warning signs of a truly spectacular Kuchiki meltdown, serene in the certainty that Byakuya couldn't hurt her even if he tried.

"Please return to your cell, Rukia-san," Amagurai added gently, turning to meet her officer's eyes. "Considering recent events and your recent injuries, I fear you are safer there than anywhere else." The youngest Kuchiki hesitated for an instant then obediently walked back inside the execution cell. Amagurai lowered the door behind her, locked it and removed the key. "There, sorted." She raised her voice: "Kiyone, Sentarō, I know you're there! Come on out right now!"

The duo emerged from behind a corner, almost tripping over each-other in their haste.

"Fukutaichō! We didn't want to get in the way-"

"Liar! You were going to rush in but I stop-"

"Enough!" Amagurai growled. Both third seats instantly shut up. "Better. Kiyone-kun, take the key and put it back in its proper place. Sentarō-kun, take Shiba-san to 4th Division and put him in their cell block. Yamada-san will assist you." She eyed the shivering seventh seat, who ducked his head meekly at her order. "After completing your orders return to 13th Division, write your reports then get some sleep. You'll need the energy."

"Hai, fukutaichō!" the duo chorused before dashing off to obey.

"I've never been able to manage them as well as you do, Amagurai-fukutaichō," Jūshirō said fondly.

"You are a kind and patient man who would never raise a hand to his subordinates, Ukitake-taichō," the bound kami responded with a smile. "I am irritable, distant and never hesitate to discipline my officers when they misbehave. My methods may be more successful but you are by far the better person of the two of us."

"Ukitake-taichō, Ukitake-fukutaichō, I bid you both farewell," Byakuya said shortly before departing in an instant.

"He really isn't happy, is he?" Jūshirō murmured as the two of them set off down to ground level.

"He's tied himself up in knots trying to please people," Amagurai replied softly, leaning slightly into her husband's warm and wonderfully healthy presence. "He hasn't realised that, so long as he doesn't actually break any laws, the only person who needs to approve of his decisions is him." She frowned. "But the execution must not be allowed to go ahead; it has no legal foundation or valid precedent and 'because we say so' is no way to run a military organisation."

"I'll look into it," Jūshirō promised.

* * *

><p>A very long day indeed. The discovery of Aizen's 'death', Zaraki's fight with Ichigo and Rukia's almost-break-out. And all of it before lunchtime, too...<p>

The next chapter will be short, but after that comes execution day which will be very long indeed with so much going on.

Please review!


	31. August 5th, 2001

**Month of falling leaves, two days to the beginning of autumn (August 5****th****)**

Amagurai got up very early the next morning and dressed quickly, just in time to receive a message from the Central 46 that set her mind whirling. The Central 46 had, in violation of custom and procedure, ordered the execution brought forward to the very next day. Which meant Amagurai had mere hours to get her investigation finished before she had to stand on Sōkyoku hill and witness her officer's demise. Not that she intended to let it happen, even if her husband's plan fell through: the tama under her tongue was more than powerful enough to absorb the kikō-ō. The phoenix spirit might even be grateful to be released from millennia of bondage.

After sending the messenger from the Reversal Counter Force on his way the bound kami ate a private breakfast with both her daughters, warning Nihyōko that, the situation being volatile, it would be safer if she remained within the grounds of the Academy until the present crisis was over. Sangohō was likewise cautioned to stay close to home, preferably within the building. "We are now under wartime ruling and I don't want either of you getting hurt," Amagurai explained.

Both girls promised to obey her so, after giving her husband a goodbye kiss and wishing him good luck in his endeavours, Amagurai hurried off towards the distant complex of buildings that marked the entrance to the underground warren inhabited by the Central 46. She had been granted a limited access pass back before Rukia's actions had been declared criminal; with all the upheaval it had not yet been rescinded. The pass would get her through the front doors and down into the least secure section of the archives, but once inside Amagurai would use her other abilities to go where she pleased.

Once upon a time, before Seireitei was built, the underground complex that now housed the Central 46 had been where all souls had lived, a fortress to the spiritually aware and those under their protection from Hollows. After Yamamoto had established regular shinigami training people had dared to venture out into the open to build, eventually building Seireitei and the Shinō Academy about two thousand years ago. As time passed more souls survived and Rukongai gradually emerged around the walled city and the original underground fortress was turned into the centre of governance. The archives however were never moved out.

The Daireishokairō or Great Spirit Library contained the original documents of every report and discovery ever made that affected Seireitei, right down to 12th Division's observations on recent events in the human world. It had impressive layers of defences with multiple keys, but as none of these were aimed at kami, even bound ones, they could no more stop Amagurai than a children's drawing could.

The entrance to the ancient underground compound was unguarded, which was unusual. Amagurai hopped over the gates, over the bridge and knocked gently on the double doors. They opened at her touch, which was both seriously disconcerting and highly suspect. Closing them silently behind her Amagurai hurried down the staircase and along the hall leading to the library. The execution was twenty-four hours away and she had to make the most of her time.

* * *

><p>The deep breath before the plunge... and a little history.<p>

Next chapter is the longest yet and action-packed!


	32. August 6th, 2001

And here it is: Execution Day. The turning point.

**Month of falling leaves, day before the beginning of autumn (August 6****th****)**

An hour before the execution was due to start Amagurai let herself out of the Central 46 complex, tapped into the reserves usually sealed off by Tenin'yoshō for a little extra speed and made a beeline for Sōkyoku hill. The information she'd dug up from the establishment of Seireitei, its early history and legislation explained a lot, as did some of the more recent sentences and scientific notes, but they did not excuse the pitiful excuse for a justice system that was being enforced.

Well, that would not be a problem for much longer: the Central 46 were dead in their assembly hall, every last one of them. There had been only one other person alive in the entire complex other than herself and she'd gone to great pains to ensure he had not the faintest inkling of her presence.

She'd successfully avoided Aizen for most of a century and escaped his notice entirely for another fifty years before that. A few hours had been child's play.

Amagurai reached the execution stand so early she was the only shinigami present and took up her place on one side, settling into a parade rest and closing her eyes. Since she was alone she could engage in a little long-distance reconnaissance.

In the early morning quiet Amagurai expanded her sensory range as far as she dared, taking in the thousands of spiritually aware presences that populated Seireitei. Familiar ones leapt out at her here and there: Shiba Ganju was in the cells under 4th Division with the Quincy and the ryoka she'd been shadowing a few days ago. The young Ishida was severly wounded within his soul and had damaged the connective strands linking his mind to his power reserves. Renji was out and about near 1st Division and Byakuya was not all that far away from his lieutenant.

Amagurai raised an eyebrow as she realised Renji was lying in wait for his captain. Further out was Zaraki-taichō, partly recovered and heading towards Fourth with Ikkaku, Yumichika, Yachiru and another presence she didn't recognise which was probably another ryoka, this one female. Likely Inoue Orihime or Arisawa Tatsuki, both of whom Kurosaki Ichigo had mentioned as being his friends.

Hitsugaya was also out and about with Matsumoto and Hinamori, and Gin and Kira were also at large, all five in the general vicinity of the Central 46 compound. Jūshirō and Kyōraku-taichō were in 13th division with her two third seats and Soi-Fon-taichō was on her way to the hill with Ōmaeda-fukutaichō. Unohana-taichō and her lieutenant were also en route, headed towards the area where Renji and Byakuya's fight was getting very heated, and sōtaichō and Sasakibe-fukutaichō would be here in minutes given their Division was closest to the execution site.

Amagurai noted with interest that Unohana-taichō had paused on the outskirts of Byakuya's battle against his lieutenant, which Renji had just lost despite reaching bankai. He'd done exceptionally well though, having pushed the Kuchiki clan head into using his own final release.

* * *

><p>Amagurai opened her eyes as Soi-Fon-taichō arrived with her subordinate and took up their places in line, Ōmaeda standing behind his captain. Then the captain-commander and his lieutenant arrived, followed by Kyōraku-taichō and Nanao-fukutaichō. Amagurai then realised that Kurotsuchi-taichō was nowhere to be seen and carefully reached out with her senses again.<p>

It seemed the mad scientist had had an accident of some kind: his reiryoku was severely depleted and he was holed up in his laboratory with his fukutaichō. Interesting. More interesting however was that Zaraki-taichō had broken into 4th Division and rescued the ryoka then run into Komamura-taichō and Tōsen and theor lieutenants on their way to the Sōkyoku hill.

As Unohana-taichō and her lieutenant, Kotetsu Isane, arrived Rukia was escorted across from the penitence cell to the execution stand. Then Byakuya arrived, his silk scarf curiously absent, and Rukia made her final request to the sōtaichō. Amagurai was momentarily distracted by the distant spike in Tōsen's reiatsu: he'd unleashed his bankai on Zaraki-taichō. Hopefully the 11th Division captain would leave enough of his blind colleague for her to finish off.

As the sōtaichō ordered the release of the Sōkyoku by the assembled members of the Detention Unit, Amagurai gently coaxed the soul gem under her tongue into life, letting it reach outwards the phoenix imprisoned within the halberd that was Soul Society's execution blade. The kikō-ō, sensing a pure presence outside its prison, swelled forth and cried out keenly as its outer bonds were loosened. As the gigantic otherworldly bird came fully into being around the Sōkyoku that bound it Amagurai made her will known to the tama and it responded, draining away the power of the phoenix and weakening the chains that shackled it to the halberd. The ancient blade had been created to contain the bird at full power so, once diminished, the kikō-ō would be able to slip between the bars of its prison and break free.

As the jewel drained away the power and she ensured the tama's actions went unnoticed Kurosaki Ichigo arrived on the scene, protecting Rukia from the kikō-ō by parrying its beak with his zanpakutō. Had the brilliant being been at full power both boy and blade would have been vaporised, but with the tama swallowing its strength the phoenix was barely at half power and fading fast, so the brash human was barely scalded. As the watching captains boggled at the impossible scene Jūshirō hurried into view with his third seats right behind him, the Shihōin Shield slung over his shoulder.

The Shihōin Shield was created at the same time as the Sōkyoku specifically to destroy it, which would not free the kikō-ō but destroy its links to Soul Society completely so the bird was permanently banished to the void. Weaving a strong illusion around the phoenix Amagurai leaned more heavily on the tama, offering up her own power to speed the process along.

As the kikō-ō was dragged from the halberd and bundled up into the soul gem Amagurai noted absently that Tōsen's bankai had collapsed; it seemed the 6th Division captain had drawn out the fight too long and enabled Zaraki to recover the upper hand. She herself had little patience for the blind captain's hypocritical and high-handed lectures.

Less than a minute after the phoenix was concealed within the tama Kurosaki Ichigo destroyed the execution stand, freeing Rukia. Then Renji arrived, heavily bandaged but still mobile and knocked out the shinigami of the Detention Unit. Kurosaki then threw Rukia at the brash lieutenant and told him to run for it.

No fool, Renji ran. Ōmaeda, Kotetsu and Sasakibe tried to give chase but were intercepted by the orange haired ryoka himself, who knocked them out before they could launch their attack.

"Third seats, scram!" Amagurai snapped as Soi-Fon lunged forward, furious at their complicity in the destruction of the Sōkyoku. She blocked the 2nd Division captain's attack, ducked under the follow-up kick and punched the shorter woman in the throat. "That was an _order_!" she hissed, flexing her reiatsu powerfully enough to make her opponent stumble in surprise. Her third seats' reiryoku signatures shot away from the hilltop, headed for the bridge leading across to the 1st Division.

Sensing the approach of a new reiryoku signature as Jūshirō and Kyōraku-taichō fled the scene with the captain-commander at their heels, Amagurai threw herself at Soi-Fon's shins as the furious shinigami charged her again. This unexpected and counter-intuitive move made the head of the Security Forces trip and the off-balance woman abruptly vanished, carried over the edge of the hill and away by someone the bound kami suspected of being former-captain Shihōin. Amagurai wondered how the2nd Division captain would react to seeing her 'Yoruichi-sama' again.

Looking around, Amagurai noticed that Unohana-taichō had used her shikai to transport the wounded away and that Byakuya was going all-out against Kurosaki Ichigo, continuing the fight that had begun two mornings ago on the bridge before the Senzaikyu. She had to wonder what on earth her former student had said to the teen he had only just met to get the boy so riled up.

* * *

><p>Rather conscious of the barriers she was still holding up to prevent people from noticing that she had the kikō-ō hidden in the tama in her mouth, Amagurai discreetly made herself scarce and headed off towards the Shrine of Penitence. The tower's sekki-seki walls would hide her actions very nicely.<p>

As she had told Jūshirō all those years ago when they first met, her power was not exactly reiryoku. After binding herself to two human souls in order to gain zanpakutō Amagurai had obtained reiryoku reserves as well, but her mostly shackled power was something more basic and potent. She could refine it into reiryoku, but it was more responsive in its natural state.

This meant that –while the sekki-seki walls did cut her off from her blades– she could still blow the entire tower to smithereens if she really wanted to.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cell inside a hastily yet precisely inked design, Amagurai removed the tama from her mouth and set it within the tiny square surrounded by elegantly alien designs. The kikō-ō emerged at once, barely larger than a swan and completely solid, crying out triumphantly as the air around it tore open to reveal a storm of luminously colourful veils across brilliantly white skies. The bird plunged through the gate, which snapped shut behind it as the ink designs burned away to nothing and the tama's glow subsided. Amagurai picked up the innocently pearlescent white sphere and put it back in her mouth, where it sank into the flesh under her tongue again and became firmly embedded once more. She could have freed the phoenix without the tama, but not so discreetly. The thing about tama was that to those who could create them they were either necessary for life or mere baubles, proof of fine control but little else. They weren't special or rare in the grand scheme of things. It was only humans or very weak youkai who were obsessed with obtaining them, believing they could grant wishes or unimaginable power.

Well, they did not. They just focussed what the owner already had. Amagurai privately could not believe how stupid Aizen was for being willing to give up everything he'd ever achieved for a silly trinket and a half-baked attempt at world domination. Who wanted to rule the world? Just think of the paperwork!

She left the tower after checking she hadn't left any evidence behind and cast around for her colleagues. Zaraki-taichō was still out in the middle of the city with Yumichika but Komamura-taichō and Tōsen had left; the latter was travelling on a collision course towards the fleeing Renji. Aizen and Gin were in Central 46 with a very weak-feeling Hinamori and Hitsugaya-taichō not far away; Matsumoto was fighting Kira just outside the entrance to the underground complex; Unohana-taichō and Kotetsu-fukutaichō were just entering the compound –an unusually high concentration of powerful shinigami in that location really– and Yamamoto-sōtaichō's fight with Kyōraku-taichō and Jūshirō was even harder to miss than Byakuya's battle against Kurosaki Ichigo.

Amagurai wandered back to the edge of the Sōkyoku hill –they'd have to change the name now she mused– and loitered near the top of the steps. Byakuya's fight was the only one she was really interested in, as Jūshirō was healthier than he had ever been and might just give the captain-commander the surprise of his life.

* * *

><p>"Ohayo, Fire-head!"<p>

Amagurai looked up. "Yachiru-chan. How is Zaraki-taichō?"

"Ken-chan's much better, Fire-head-fukutaichō!" Yachiru chirped from her perch in the branches of a nearby tree. "I told him what you promised and he says that if you don't show up on time he'll hunt you down!" She smiled. "He was happy about it though. He hasn't had this much fun in years!"

Amagurai just smiled as the people whose relatively subdued reiryoku presences she'd sensed coming up the stairs arrived on the hilltop behind her, breathing heavily. There was a chorus of nervous noises as they noticed her, probably in response to the lieutenant's insignia wrapped around her left arm.

"Nishi-fukutaichō," said the Quincy, whose spiritual energy paths were almost completely burnt out.

"Ishida-san," she acknowledged. "I see you recovered admirably, as expected of a Quincy."

The bespectacled boy looked away. "I am no longer a Quincy, Nishi-san."

"Regardless of the amount of power you possess you will always be a Quincy, Ishida Uryu," Amagurai said firmly. "Which reminds me: are you related to an Ishida Ryūken?"

Ishida looked up sharply. "My father, Nishi-san."

Amagurai nodded. She'd thought he looked familiar. "Do give him my regards, won't you? Not all shinigami supported the genocide of your people."

The boy nodded, clearly thinking very hard about the myriad implications of her words.

"Would you introduce your associates to me, Ishida-san?" the lieutenant asked politely. "Kurosaki-san mentioned his friends to me but I would like to be able to match names to faces."

The Quincy did so. The girl with the impressive bust was Inoue Orihime and the olive skinned giant was Sado Yasutora.

"I know Shiba Ganju-san already," she added as the young archer moved to introduce him next, "and Aramaki-san as well." The tenth seat of 11th Division cringed slightly as she glanced at him.

Ganju stared at her, apparently unable to believe his eyes. "I thought I'd dreamed you," he said eventually. "Why did you never come back?"

"Your sister banned me from her home until I kept my promise to you," Amagurai said simply. "She felt I was insulting your family with my words and making light of your loss." She paused. "I will tell you what I know, Shiba Ganju: the day will come when I see that Hollow again, and when that day comes I will bring back what was lost."

The young Shiba grunted, but seemed to accept her words.

"And Sado-san! I followed your progress across Seireitei on the day you arrived, you know," Amagurai said more cheerfully, looking up at the tallest teen and smiling warmly. "Your demolition skills are to be commended: Previously only Zaraki-taichō was physically strong enough to consider walls to be mere suggestions rather than clearly defined boundaries. Not even Kurosaki-san made as much mess!"

The teen blushed, though it was hard to see under his hair. "That was not my intent, Nishi-san," he rumbled.

"Don't worry about it; it's all easily fixed and hopefully the shinigami you defeated will now be motivated to train harder in the future," Amagurai responded. "As for Inoue-san, might I ask about your abilities? Your reiryoku patterns are strangely familiar."

The girl obligingly called up six little fairies from her hairpins and they all introduced themselves. "I'm not very good at fighting though," she sighed. "I don't like hurting people at all."

Amagurai thought about that while she tried to tease out of her memory why exactly the girl's power and abilities gave her a sense of déjà vu. "Inoue-san, you are your team's only healer, are you not?"

The ginger haired girl nodded, fairies still floating around her head.

"Then know this," Amagurai said seriously: "If you do not defend yourself adequately and kill or maim those who try to harm you, your friends _will_ die. Because with you dead or injured there will be nobody else to heal them after their battles."

The cheery girl went dead white. Amagurai raised a warning hand to stem her friends' outrage. "I was in 4th Division myself once and this is the truth, Inoue-san: a healer's first duty is to preserve themselves, so that once the fight is over they can revive and restore their colleagues. Everyone else's survival hinges upon yours, so. _Do. Not. Fail_."

Inoue Orihime looked a little sick, but still nodded firmly. "I promise, Nishi-san."

"Consider this, if you must: someone who attacks you is trying to kill your friends, because without your aid they are far more likely to die of their own injuries," Amagurai suggested as another massive shockwave blasted through the trees and made the ground shudder.

"Thank-you, Nishi-san," the busty teen said, holding her head up high. "That does help."

"You are most welcome, Inoue Orihime," the bound kami murmured.

"Whose side are you actually on, Nishi-fukutaichō?" Ishida asked suspiciously.

Amagurai raised an eyebrow. "Whose side? Who said anything about taking sides? I am merely assisting in the prevention of a severe miscarriage of justice, namely the illegal execution of one of my subordinates. Execution is for high treason, Ishida-san, not minor misdemeanours. Not even Urahara-san was sentenced to death for his alleged offences against his fellow officers back when he was captain of the Twelfth."

"Urahara-san was a captain?" the Quincy blurted out, adjusting his glasses and looking shocked.

"Alleged offences?" Sado repeated.

Amagurai shrugged. "I was actually there, as it happens; I know he was framed, not that I could do anything about it at the time," she explained rather obliquely. "Not that his innocence in that matter will keep me from hurting him for what he did to Rukia."

"Urahara-san did something to Rukia-san? But I thought he wanted to help her! He helped us come and rescue her-" Inoue Orihime babbled nervously.

"He gave her a gigai which absorbed and inhibited her spirit energy," Amagurai gritted out, interrupting the flood of incoherence from the human girl. "It could have killed her and very nearly destroyed her spiritual abilities for good. As it was getting her out of the damn thing almost killed her anyway."

"That wasn't very nice of Urahara-san, doing that after she saved Kurosaki-kun's life!" Inoue said firmly, and then looked over through the trees. "Oh! Has the fight finished?"

Amagurai turned her attention towards the battlefield. "Yes, it has. Please excuse me; I have a captain to catch up with." She left the ryoka in a blur of flashstep.

* * *

><p>She found Byakuya by the suspension bridge leading to the Senzaikyu, leaning heavily on one of the support posts. Amagurai silently walked over to him and carefully loosened his obi in order to place a glowing green hand over the wound that cut deep into his shoulder.<p>

"I lost," the 6th Division captain said blankly, voice barely above a whisper. "I have never been so happy to lose in my life."

"Do you remember what I told you on the day you told me about Hisana?" Amagurai asked quietly, carefully closing the fierce rents in the exposed muscles and realigning damaged blood vessels. The orange haired human had certainly done a number on the Kuchiki clan head.

Byakuya blinked. "You told me I was the head of the clan, so I should show them I could lead."

"In order to lead a person must go in new directions ahead of the rest," the lieutenant murmured as she tended to the smaller but still deep wounds on his head and arms. "A leader does things that have not been done before so that others might learn that they are possible. How is it possible to truly lead without stepping beyond current boundaries, be they of power, custom or simply terrain?"

The captain of the 6th Division bowed his head. "Thank-you, sensei," he said softly, "for your wisdom. Would that I had heeded your words sooner and saved myself much grief."

Amagurai hugged him. "Don't go beating yourself up any more, Byakuya-kun. You have plenty of other people lining up to do that for you." She drew back and straightened his clothing as much as was possible given their tattered state. "Now I-"

_Tentei Kura. Attention all soul reapers and the ryoka; this is Kotetsu I am about to tell you is the truth..._

Amagurai listened as Aizen's plot was exposed for all to hear and quickly caught hold of Byakuya as the transmission ended. "Wait for me to finish fusing your ribs back together!"

"Aizen has Rukia!" the Kuchiki hissed furiously, eyes thin slits. "Hurry up!"

Amagurai hurried, pouring in more power where she lacked the finesse to do the job accurately in the time she had. "It's a patch job but it should hol-" and Byakuya was gone. Amagurai shot after him, praying that the Kuchiki clan head's ribcage would indeed hold up until Unohana got hold of him. Dashing off half healed was very bad for a person.

She arrived just in time to see Byakuya get stabbed by Gin's zanpakutō while rescuing his unconscious sister. Amagurai didn't hesitate: silently releasing her shikai she appeared behind the silver-haired fox-avatar and soundly hit him over the head with the flat of the sturdy iron fan.

"Ow!" Gin staggered forward and almost fell over, retracting his shikai back into its base form. "What the hell!" He turned. "Nishi-san? Whaddya hit me for?"

"You stabbed Kuchiki-sama!" Amagurai said tartly, Jōdokin poised to defend her from a counter attack. "I am a retainer of the Kuchiki clan and cannot simply stand by and watch people stab them!"

"Ya could look the other way instead of whacking me with your zanpakutō!" Gin whined childishly. "That really hurt!"

"Gin," Aizen said warningly. The fox avatar scowled, gingerly touching the back of his skull then looking at his fingers.

"She drew blood, taichō!"

"Then kill her," Aizen said calmly. Amagurai raised her now half-unfurled fan warningly as she stood firm a little out of arms' reach. Gin raised his own zanpakutō again but stopped as Matsumoto appeared behind him, sword held against his throat.

Amagurai stepped away from Gin as the sōtaichō stepped forwards and moved to stand behind Tōsen.

"You swore an oath when you became a shinigami, Kaname," she whispered just loud enough for the treacherous captain to hear, "and then you broke it wilfully and carelessly. _Oath-breaker_. I will see you dead for that."

Tōsen turned slightly to glare at her. "I chose the path of least blood-"

"I don't care," Amagurai interrupted harshly. "You murdered your squad-mates in the night after swearing to stand beside them against the enemies of Soul Society. Be forever damned, oath-breaker!" That last bit had weight; words had power and the words of a kami spoken in anger –no matter how weakened she was– would hang over Tōsen's head, hindering and dragging him down for what little remained of his life.

Sensing danger, Amagurai leapt back just as the Negación descended from the shattered sky and enveloped the three treacherous captains. "May those you betrayed be granted vengeance!" she shouted after the blind man.

Once the three were gone, those remaining turned to more mundane matters such as tending to the wounded.

* * *

><p>"Nishi-fukutaichō?"<p>

Amagurai turned, blinking innocently up at the scarred and tattooed face of the lieutenant of 9th Division. "Yes, Hisagi-fukutaichō?"

The younger fukutaichō had an unhappy frown on his face. "Why did you call Tōsen-taichō an oath-breaker?"

Amagurai glanced around; nobody else seemed to be paying attention to them. "As you know, we all swear oaths when we become shinigami, Hisagi-kun. Oaths that demand we uphold order within Soul Society and stand beside our fellow officers against any foes. A century ago, when he was only a fifth seat, Tōsen murdered both of the higher seated officers in his Division and the sixth seat while they, their lieutenant and Muguramura-taichō were out on a mission. One of those murdered shinigami was a dear friend of mine; I felt his death and hurried to the scene in time to hear Tōsen freely admit that he had slain his comrades. He felt no guilt over doing so, believing that their deaths were of no particular consequence." The bound kami swallowed hard. "Third seat Shinobu was kind. I first met him in the Academy and he never minded my coming to visit him in Ninth after we graduated. He helped me perfect my footwork and let me sit in his office while he worked on the _Seireitei Communication_."

Hisagi Shūhei seemed to sag slightly under the weight of the information. "Did you perhaps see what happened to Muguramura-taichō, Nishi-san?" he asked hesitantly, fingers rising to brush the 69 tattoo on the side of his face.

Amagurai nodded sadly. "Aizen happened. Tōsen watched; he'd helped set it up."

The other lieutenant looked horrified. "He set up his own captain?"

"He even called it justice," Amagurai said bitterly, "saying that Muguramura's death was part of the path of least bloodshed." She looked her colleague in the eye: "I'm going to kill him, Hisagi. Don't try to stop me."

Hisagi Shūhei bowed his head, eyes closed and face pinched. "I will not, Nishi-san. If Tōsen-taichō abandoned his oaths so completely then he is truly beyond help."

"Thank-you," the redhead murmured. "Anytime you need help with the paperwork, let me know: I've had practice dealing with a captain's workload due to Ukitake-taichō's poor health."

The other lieutenant nodded silently and walked over to where Komamura-taichō was trying to argue with the 4th Division shinigami who wanted to heal him. Amagurai had known from the first instant she met him that Komamura had yōkai blood; it was good to see he wasn't trying to hide anymore.

* * *

><p>Amagurai paused to survey the scene: Inoue Orihime was healing Kurosaki Ichigo, Kotetsu Isane was working on Byakuya and Unohana-taichō was busy ensuring Renji would remain in this world a while longer. The newest fukutaichō had had a very difficult day: two life-threatening battles and it wasn't even afternoon yet!<p>

Amagurai-fukutaichō?"

The redhead turned and smiled warmly at her captain. "Ukitake-taichō. How are you doing today?"

"I feel very well, thank-you," her husband told her. "In fact, I feel better than I have in centuries. I wonder if Shunsui would mind sparring with me later."

"If he doesn't agree to then I will," she offered. "After I've kept my promise to Zaraki-taichō, that is."

"You promised Zaraki a fight?" Kyōraku-taichō asked incredulously, coming up behind her. "And what do you know that I don't, Shiro, that the prospect of your charming little lieutenant fighting Kenpachi has you smiling?" he added suspiciously. "Has someone been keeping secrets?"

"You could come and watch, Kyōraku-taichō," Amagurai offered. Said captain wrapped an arm around her shoulders:

"Nishi-chan, how many times do I have to ask you to call me Shunsui?"

"At least one more time, Kyōraku-taichō," she responded lightly, slipping out of his grasp with ease. Shunsui was an unrepentant flirt but he knew she was married to his best friend and never pushed too far. "Ukitake-taichō would like to spar with you later, if possible."

The captain with the pink kimono thrown over his haori eyed his best friend carefully. "Even after fighting Yama-ji, Shiro?"

Jūshirō smiled mischievously. "Ama-chan's not the only one who's been keeping secrets, Shunsui."

"Later then," the 8th Division captain agreed amiably.

* * *

><p>And that's the bulk of the action complete! I just have to tie up a few loose ends then the ryoka will be returning to the human world. After that the story will go on hiatus, as I haven't written the Winter War yet. Instead I will be working on my other stories. I won't abandon this though, and the wait shouldn't be too long.<p> 


	33. August 9th, 2001

**Month of falling leaves, two days after the beginning of autumn (August 9****th****)**

Three days after Aizen's betrayal was uncovered Amagurai wandered into 11th Division first thing in the morning, looking for a fight. She'd spent the last two days helping 5th Division's woefully unprepared third seat deal with all the paperwork accumulating in the absence of his taichō and fukutaichō. Hinamori was still in a coma and had been pulled from active duty indefinitely, pending evaluation of her mental state after she returned to consciousness. Amagurai had also taken the time to check up on Kira, Hisagi and Matsumoto: though the latter had not been betrayed by her captain the young genius had been badly injured and the lieutenant had lost her first friend. Amagurai could not yet reveal the reasoning behind Gin's actions that had led him to follow Aizen, but still comforted the curvaceous strawberry blonde as best she could, mainly by buying her large quantities of alcohol.

Matsumoto was grateful; Hitsugaya-taichō, when he recovered, was not.

* * *

><p>"Nishi-fukutaichō." The bound kami turned to smile at Miburō Saitō. "Finally coming clean, Satsu-san?" the former Shinsengumi asked.<p>

Amagurai shrugged gracefully; she'd hunted him down on the evening after the attempted execution to ask him why he'd kept such a low profile. His answer had not really surprised her: he had claimed that as the execution had been unlawful he had seen no need to ensure it would happen. So, instead of going after the ryoka, he'd stuck to the shadows and made sure all of his Division members received the necessary healing after their encounters.

She suspected that Kurosaki Ichigo would be completely creeped out to discover that he'd been shadowed around Eleventh by someone that could have killed him at any moment they chose.

"About halfway, I think," she replied, aware of their growing audience. "I'd rather not get outed to sōtaichō and get into trouble."

"Eleventh won't tell on you," Ikkaku assured her, flopping against the wall just within earshot. "Not if it's about fighting and especially not if you'll come by and spar more often."

"What I'll be keeping back is probably too juicy a secret even for Eleventh to keep," Amagurai said wryly, "though what I'm going to share is dangerous enough. I suspect some of you have already guessed, though."

"So you really are Satsu, Rukongai's shuhitokiri?" Yumichika asked. In response Amagurai removed her hairpins, stuck them through her obi and tied her thigh-length hair up in a high ponytail. Peeking through fine, cheek-length bangs at her audience she let loose her other aura and smirked like a killer.

"Hitokiri wa hitokiri," Saitō said in satisfaction. "You may not be who I first thought you were when I saw you on that rooftop, but you and he are two of a kind."

The canny old wolf more right than he would ever know, Amagurai mused as 11th Division's shinigami either backed away or grinned predatorily back at her, depending on how little sense of self-preservation they had. Tenin'yoshō matched her true nature almost too perfectly, the man he had once been so keenly similar to the woman she had become over centuries of honing and shaping. She inclined her head to her audience of killers.

"I am Nishi Satsu, founder of Koyabashi's Nishi School of Defence, also called Shuhitokiri due to the bloody nature of the kills attributed to me. No one has ever seen me kill and lived to tell of it. I came into this world a hitokiri and shall remain one until the day I die." Which would never come; kami do not die. They simply... relocate. Even without Battōsai's guiding hand she would never lose what he had carefully cultivated within her. She had killed before, killed thousands in hundreds of different ways over the centuries, but never before had it been both honed within her to an art-form and etched deep into instinct.

"I've been looking forward to this," Zaraki-taichō said, stepping forward in a storm of oppressive reiatsu with a crazed smile on his face. "A real fight at last."

"Not to the death please, taichō: we'd only get to do it once and I might be left to run this damned Division of lunatics," Amagurai said with a razor-sharp grin of her own. "But I'll beat you bloody and broken any day of the week, given a few days' notice."

"Ha!" the blood-thirsty giant laughed. "Let's see it then!"

Amagurai reached past the tantō in her obi and drew Tenin'yoshō from his hidden sheath. "Zaraki Kenpachi, meet my first zanpakutō and teacher in the art of slaughter, Tenin'yoshō, Heavenly Scales of Light and Shadow."

The 11th Division captain laughed at her. "It's got no edge! How can you kill anything with a sword without an edge?"

Amagurai's answering grin held an edge that made even Ikkaku nervous. "This is a spar, Kenpachi-san;" she loosed her reiatsu enough to shake the walls. "I'm not _trying_ to kill you."

* * *

><p>An hour later Amagurai's shihakushō was ragged and bloody from over a dozen wounds. Zaraki on the other hand was covered in long, dark bruises with bloody highlights and laughing like a maniac in between wheezing and gasping from the pain of his broken ribs.<p>

"You, I _like_ you, Nishi," he breathed. "No-one has _ever_ broken my bones before. We'll have to do this again sometime."

Amagurai nodded, cleaning her blade and sheathing it then letting down her hair so she could put it back up in its usual style. "Our little secret then, taichō? I'd rather not get told off for hiding my abilities and my choice in extracurricular activities."

"How the hell do you..." Yumichika trailed off disbelievingly as the bound kami finished with her hair and concealed her oppressive energy signature behind a facade of ladylike gentle propriety, the very colour of her reiryoku fading from harsh orange through fierce gold and back to lush, soft green. "How is that even possible?" the fifth seat gaped. "Your magnificent fire and beautiful brutality are completely gone!"

Amagurai couldn't resist: she blinked innocently up at the appearance-obsessed shinigami, eyes wide, limpid and slightly confused. "Oro?"

Ikkaku groaned, burying his face in his hands. "No-one would ever believe us if we did tell! We get the picture, now stop, stop _fluttering_ like that!" he waved a hand at her wildly, encompassing the quivering eyelashes, nervously knotted fingers and shuffling feet. "It's effing creepy!"

Amagurai desisted, bowing as best she could with her wounds and turned to leave. Saitō fell in step beside her, expression flat and irritated.

"'Oro', hm?" he repeated dryly.

Amagurai sighed as she carefully adjusted her steps so as not to aggravate her injuries. Zaraki had barely held back at all, only keeping his eyepatch on. "Tenin'yoshō, the heavenly blade that balances light and shadows, death and life. To be a hitokiri is to become a blade in the hands of your master, to strike where he wills, as he wills. Hence why hitokiri are not given missions, only targets."

The Wolf of Mibu blinked, stumbled and stared. "Battōsai is your _zanpakutō_? How-"

"Some things just are," the bound kami interrupted, waving a hand sharply. "He was a good teacher, Saitō, and is as fine a partner as any shinigami could ever hope for. As you pointed out, we match very closely." She fingered a loose strand of hair. "Perhaps a little too closely."

Saitō shook his head. "Always doing things the hard way, Kenshin," he muttered bemusedly. "Come on fukutaichō, let's get you to Fourth."

* * *

><p>"Whatever happened to my sensible fifteenth seat, Amagurai-fukutaichō?" Unohana-taichō wondered gently as she looked over the redhead's injuries with an expert eye.<p>

"She leant that if she just stretched her wings and leaped, she could soar, Unohana-taichō," Amagurai responded equally gently. "I am a hawk, not a dove, taichō, and that cannot be helped."

The 4th Division captain nodded understandingly. "At least you take precautions and see to your health, for which I am grateful, Amagurai-san. You will be healed by morning. Now rest."

"Hai, taichō," Amagurai said obediently, relaxing back on the cushions.

"If only all my patients were so well behaved," Unohana sighed before leaving the room.

A few minutes later a head peeked around the doorframe of her room.

"Did you really fight Zaraki to a standstill?" Kurosaki Ichigo asked.

"Yes."

"_Why_?"

Amagurai smiled up at the ceiling. "I promised to. Besides, I wanted to see if I could do it."

"You, you..." the orange haired teen seemed at a loss for words.

"Kurosaki-kun," Amagurai sighed, "come in." She patted the bed. The boy sidled in and gingerly perched himself on the edge of the bed, face marred by his ever-present scowl.

"Have you ever taken a risk, then suddenly realised that here was something you could not only do, but excel at?" she asked him, trying to word the feeling properly. Pausing, she remembered Rukia's report. "How did it feel, when you killed the Hollow threatening your family that first time?"

"It..." the teen's voice trailed off pensively and his frown deepened.

"Like falling through the air and suddenly knowing you could fly?" Amagurai pushed gently, matching the words to the wild and familiar yearning that sang through his reiatsu. His lack of control made him ridiculously easy to read. "Like you'd finally discovered what you had been _born_ to do?"

"Yes," Ichigo said softly, the conviction and agreement in his voice solid enough to built cities on. "So..." he went on, eyeing her sideways as his tone became drier, "you fought Zaraki just because?"

"Pretty much," she agreed. "I wanted to know if I could match him in a spar."

"Can you?"

Amagurai remembered the harsh crack of broken bones and the gobsmacked looks of the audience as their captain lost the use of his left arm. "I can."

Ichigo's eyes widened. "Oh-kay. Scary." He glanced at her sideways. "Are you going to do it again?"

The bound kami recalled the elation of dancing with Tenin'yoshō without the chilly edge of premeditated murder and necessary secrecy. "I will, I think." It had been, dare she say it, fun.

Ichigo grinned suddenly, face abruptly younger and more innocent. "Better you than me, Nishi-san."

* * *

><p>Amagurai keeps her promise and lets out a few secrets.<p>

I didn't give a blow-by-blow of the fight because fights are something to be seen and felt, not narrated. They work in visual media like manga and anime but writing one always feels clunky.

Please review? Pretty please?


	34. august 12th, 2001

**Month of falling leaves, five days after the beginning of autumn (August 12****th****)**

"Thank-you for offering to train me, Nishi-san!" Inoue Orihime said brightly, bouncing along behind the fukutaichō as she led the way out into a deserted area of Rukongai.

"It is indeed very kind of you, Nishi-fukutaichō," Ishida agreed as he picked his way through the bushes, "but why did you ask me to accompany you? I have completely lost my powers."

"That the very reason I require your assistance," Amagurai said with a smile, eyes curving up into disturbingly Gin-like slits as they arrived in a wide cleared area. "Inoue-chan, I will be attacking both you and Ishida-kun. You will have to attack with the intent to kill –or at least maim– if you are to prevent me from slaying him." She drew her zanpakutō as the Quincy went a nasty shade of grey and the gentle girl looked horrified.

"But Nishi-san-" Inoue Orihime babbled, waving her hands, "-I can't-"

"Hinder, Jōdokin." The tantō in the lieutenant's hand fanned out to become a razor-edged battle tessen and she charged the Quincy, not bothering to put too much effort into it. The boy dived sideways, rolling across the ground. Amagurai bounced off a tree and attacked again, this time carving a bloody gouge in the arm Ishida Uryu used to protect his neck.

"Inoue-san, help!" the teen squeaked desperately as Amagurai turned, herding the injured boy towards the rocks.

"Santen Kesshun-" the busty girl started hurriedly as the shinigami viciously kicked the bespectacled boy in the gut and swung her fan forward, almost taking off his ear and carving another gouge in the side of his head. "I reje-"

Amagurai twisted and lunged again, cleanly severing three of the Quincy's fingers. The boy made a horrible chocked sound of shock and horror, blindly gripping the bleeding stumps with his free hand to stem the gush of arterial blood.

"Tsubaki! Koten Zanshun!" Orihime cried desperately from behind the shinigami. Amagurai half-turned and raised Jōdokin to swat the fairy; there was an explosion as the tiny creature impacted hard against her zanpakutō and threw her into a tree.

"Again, Tsubaki!" the girl shouted, face white and hands shaking. "Ayame, Shun'ō, Sōten Kisshun!" A dome sprouted around the Quincy, who had fallen to his knees. Amagurai threw herself straight upwards into the air to avoid the returning Tsubaki, who wizzed through where her torso had been and bisected a few trees before bending back around.

"Sixth Obstacle: Reflect!" Amagurai snapped as Tsubaki hit Jōdokin again and her shikai's special power made the bloodthirsty little fairy ricochet back the way he'd come and blast apart another tree. "Time!" She folded her zanpakutō closed.

"Time?" Orihime gasped, swaying slightly.

"That means stop, Inoue-chan," Amagurai said firmly. "Ishida-kun is recovered enough that interrupting the healing process won't kill him and you need a break."

The dome over the Quincy faded and the busty girl toppled forward. Flash step enabled the lieutenant to catch her pupil and an offer of rations was gratefully accepted.

* * *

><p>"Thanks, Nishi-san," growled a voice by Amagurai's ear as the two humans ate the food she'd brought, though Ishida Uryu was still having trouble moving his damaged fingers.<p>

Amagurai tipped her head to glance at the very macho fairy hovering next to her head. "For what, Tsubaki-kun?"

The little being smirked behind his mask. "That was the first time she's ever attacked with the intent to harm, if not actually kill. It was about time she got her act together."

"She was part of the infiltration force and managed to go through five days without actually wanting to hurt anyone?" The lieutenant could scarcely believe it. Coddling the girl like that was pointless, dangerous and seriously short-sighted. "How did she not get killed?"

Tsubaki snorted. "The Quincy protected her."

Amagurai shook her head, looking over at the duo. Orihime was apparently recovered enough to continue healing her friend, which meant she was well enough to defend herself. "Second Obstacle: Trip," she said quietly, flicking her fan partly open in their direction.

The dirt rippled under Inoue's feet, throwing her backwards. The lieutenant attacked again, lightly shaking her zanpakutō from side to side like a cymbal: "Seventh Obstacle: Shake!"

The ground shuddered violently, breaking up into loose rubble as every tree in a ten metre radius groaned and fell. The bubble protecting the still-injured Ishida fell apart as Inoue's concentration faltered, forcing him to stagger through the shifting rocks in a desperate attempt to get away.

"Nishi-san!" The girl shouted, voice outraged as she tried to scrabble out from under a pile of loose rocks. That was mean!"

"Your enemies won't wait until you're ready for them!" Amagurai sing-songed with a wicked grin splitting her face before flash-stepping over the treacherous ground towards the Quincy, who had managed to stumble out of the attack radius. A triangular gold barrier materialised between her and the boy just in time to block the lieutenant's shot at disembowelling him, but the shinigami instantly used hohō to move behind her target –and around the shield– and strike again, brutally ripping open his back and tearing through his spine.

Isida Uryu collapsed forward onto the triangular shield and slowly slid down it, smearing the scarlet spatter adorning it. Amagurai coolly kicked her victim in the back of the knee, absently swatted away an attack with her half-open tessen then raised her weapon to land a killing blow across the paralysed boy's throat.

The attack did not connect. A shearing blast shot through her arm faster than could easily be followed, bisecting the limb into two halves hanging limply from the elbow joint. It seemed Orihime had just learnt how to attack without vocalising; excellent progress indeed.

"Good shot," Amagurai said ruefully, other hand quickly gripping the shredded elbow to stem the spurting blood. "Do you know that feeling well enough to call it up on demand now?"

The trembling girl, one leg still trapped under the rock pile, nodded shakily, face dead white. "You would have killed him, Nishi-san!" she stammered, eyes wide and hurt.

"I might well have," the shinigami agreed unperturbedly. "I would have stalled his passing and let you fix him up a bit afterwards, but I did strike with the intent to kill. Your enemies will do no less. Do you understand that now?"

The young teen awkwardly rubbed her face, smearing blood and tears across her cheeks and nodded shakily.

"Good." Placing a foot on her zanpakutō, Amagurai muttered "Sink." The rubble trapping Orihime turned to sand, freeing her. At full power that attack created a deep pit of quicksand that swallowed its victims and smothered them; this scant fraction was enough to reduce the shallow layer of rocks she had dislodged to powder.

"I believe the lesson is over then, Inoue-san," the lieutenant went on brightly, ignoring the pain as her body informed her mind that the lower half of her left arm had been ripped in half down the middle and her hand was in two discrete pieces. "Come over here and put Ishida-san back together again so he can walk back to Seireitei for lunch."

The girl stumbled over through the sand, knelt down beside her friend and hesitated. "Nishi-fukutaichō?"

"Hm?"

Inoue Orihime bit her lip. "Ano, can I mend your arm? I feel bad about injuring you... you were trying to teach me and I wasn't trying-"

"Stop," Amagurai said firmly. "I would be very grateful to be healed, Inoue-chan. Do not try to blame yourself for this; I was doing my best to kill your friend and was perfectly aware of what you were capable of if provoked. Do not apologise for injuring me."

"Okay," the teen said meekly. "Lie down next to Ishida-san please, then I can heal you both."

* * *

><p>"You chopped her arm in half?" Ichigo repeated slowly, staring at his russet-haired friend in blatant shock.<p>

"She was about to kill Ishida-san! She dodged my shield and cut his back open and he wasn't moving and I was stuck under some rocks!" Inoue babbled, arms waving wildly. "I tried to distract her but she just batted Tsubaki away without even looking and there was no more time so I just had to do something!"

"So you chopped her arm in half," Ichigo said again, shaking his head in disbelief. "Well done!"

"Huh?" his friend blinked at him, clearly surprised by his reaction.

"She was probably going really easy on you but you still managed to land a real, solid hit! On a lieutenant!" the orange haired substitute shinigami enthused, treating the girl to a rare grin.

Inoue blushed. "Nishi-san says I must remember the feeling and practice, so I can do it again without having to see my friends about to die," she confided.

Amagurai smiled as Ichigo encouraged his friend and offered to help her train while Unohana-taichō examined the lieutenant's newly mended arm. The 4th Division captain had been not entirely pleased to hear that the first thing she'd done on being released from hospital was let someone rip her arm open. That she had then had said individual heal the damage right away was no excuse.

* * *

><p>Amagurai takes some time to train Orihime a bit. Her methods, while traumatic, prove highly effective. Though poor Uryu wil likely flinch at fans for a good long time.<p>

Yesterday was my birthday, so as a treat for myself I didn't update as soon as I might have. I got lots of books as presents, so Istarted reading them instead.


	35. August 13th, 2001

**Month of falling leaves, six days after the beginning of autumn (August 13****th****)**

Amagurai stood quietly next to Rukia as her subordinate said goodbye to her human friends. Her beloved husband had managed to get ahold of one of the rare substitute shinigami authorisation badges for the young Kurosaki, which incidentally meant the boy had been added to 13th Division as a 'detached officer', as those who had either retired or performed duties other than combat were generally called. Every Division had them, Second more than most.

Jūshirō was in better health now than he had been in over a century and was still improving rapidly, finally achieving his true potential. He now spent a few hours every day chasing either his wife or best friend around a practice field, which made Amagurai want to jump for joy just thinking about it. With him also taking over his fare share of the paperwork and various active duties Amagurai had much more free time on her hands, which she divided between playing with her young daughter and socialising with her fellow lieutenants. Kira was terribly depressed in the aftermath of Gin's defection and Hisagi seemed to be blaming himself for not noticing that his captain had never had the best interests of the Gotei 13 at heart. Hinamori was still in a come in 4th Division and 5th Division was barely limping along in her absence, morale having crashed through the floor on discovering that their beloved captain was a traitor.

3rd Division wasn't doing much better, to be honest: they were a naturally grim lot and their lieutenant's palpable aura of gloom was not helping them cope. 9th Division was holding up mainly due to them all being far too busy with _Seireitei Communication_ and their policing duties to really think things through.

Amagurai therefore dedicated her free time to doing what she could for those stricken: she had dispatched Kotetsu Kiyone to 5th Division to assist with the paperwork, offloading half of the third seat's duties onto Kotsubaki to give the girl more time to work in. Helping Kira Izuru wasn't all that taxing: she had been in Third herself once and knew how the division worked. She also knew Gin better than most –possibly better than anyone– so managed to help her fellow fukutaichō get things in order as well as help him keep them there. She also sparred with the gloomy blond hard enough that he had to stop moping or get absolutely pasted; after the first few times when he failed to come out of his funk fast enough the lieutenant put up a pretty good fight.

Helping Hisagi Shūhei was both easier and harder. Amagurai by hook or by crook made space in her timetable every afternoon to help with the mammoth task of editing the _Seireitei Communication_ and give her colleague someone to bounce ideas off. Her unusually detailed knowledge of both Seireitei and Rukongai, courtesy of her late-night jaunts, enabled her to offer informed assistance in organising the Division's other duty: of policing the Court of Pure Souls.

Poor Shūhei hadn't said a word about anything remotely personal since execution day, but Amagurai could tell pushing him wouldn't help. If he turned to her for help she'd do everything in her power for help, but until then she would just be there. If he didn't ask, she'd wait until he snapped then pick up the pieces afterwards. She'd known there was something twisted in Tōsen Kaname for a century and done nothing; it was only proper that she now deal with the consequences of that neglect.

* * *

><p>As the ryoka left through the Senkaimon Amagurai reflected on the changes she would have to get used to now that Aizen had finally put his scheme in motion. The first and largest change was that her husband was no longer ill. Considering that even while weak and sickly he had been among the four most powerful and respected Shinigami in Soul Society, that change would seriously affect the status quo.<p>

Secondly, the entire 11th Division –well, all of the upper seated officers at least– were now aware of her alter ego and other zanpakutō. Sooner or later that information would spread beyond their Division and Amagurai would be called before sōtaichō to explain herself.

Thirdly there was Nihyōko. The kitsune had come home asking pointed questions about Ichimaru Gin and had outright demanded to know if they were related, seeing as they were both foxes. How her adopted daughter had worked it out Amagurai had no idea, but the girl was old enough so the bound kami had regaled the kitsune with the circumstances of her birth. The lieutenant still had no idea how that would pan out in the end.

Fourth were her new protégés. She wasn't sure how it had happened but she now considered Renji, Izuru and Shūhei to be 'hers'. Said category had up until now only included the two younger Kuchikis in addition to her husband and children, so she wasn't quite sure how she'd got so attached to the three prickly lieutenants. Well, Renji was understandable –she knew him pretty well considering– but she'd only really got to know the other two recently. The only other people who she had ever considered 'hers' were Shinobu and Sōjun, who were dead, and Ōtoribashi Rōjūrō, who was missing. She had very few attachments and forming those bonds usually took a very, very long time.

Her attachments were what bound her to Soul Society, bound her to this tiny patch of reality as firmly as a choke chain. It was part of her unique curse to be imprisoned by her own love for others, unable to leave them and forced to remain beside them until death. Jūshirō was her main anchor: until he passed on she would be unable to travel anywhere he could not access. The other ties were looser, keeping her to the general vicinity but still firmly rooted in her heart.

Of course, their ties to her did not mean she wanted them to die; quite the opposite. They were infinitely precious to her. But caring for others was a double-edged blade with no hilf for the ageless kami: their pain hurt her, their sorrow grieved her and their loss ripped holes in her being. She sincerely hoped she would not be further bound, but her hopes were not high.

All those bonds, tightly binding her being and tugging her onwards towards the inevitable confrontation with Aizen and his allies, gave her the distinct impression that whatever deity was managing this tiny fiefdom in the endless Firmament wanted to make absolutely sure that whatever Fate had in mind would go to plan. This would not be the first time she'd been pulled into local power struggles and pushed into backing up one hero or other; it wasn't even the twentieth time. All part of her curse, she suspected. At least she got a quiet lifetime or two for each supporting part in somebody else's Grand Destiny.

She suspected Destiny's current punch bag to be none other than Kurosaki Ichigo; he fit the type.

* * *

><p>And that's all for now, folks: all the backlog is typed up and loaded online for your reading pleasure. I'll be getting back to my other stories now and possibly pandering to the whims of another plot bunny or two.<p>

I do have more of this in mind, but I have to write it out first and my muse just doesn't see it as a priority. Therefore, this is both temporarily **finished** and on **hiatus**.


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